ABSTRACT
The typical Nepali is a peasant farmer trying to wrest a livelihood from a small, fragmented holding in an overcrowded countryside. Insecurity of tenure, indebtedness, a lack of transport and marketing networks, and the vagaries of an unreliable monsoon add to the problems. Parts of Nepal suffer extreme population pressure – pressure which is not necessarily measured in absolute population densities but in terms of the availability of cultivable land, and in levels of agricultural technology and the endowment of other economic resources.
