Sustainable soil management practices and farmers livelihoods: A spatial perspective

A B S T R A C T Diverse soil management practices exist even within a narrow transect of farming areas in Nepal. This variation is principally due to location of farm households along the spatial gradient, infrastructure availability, market demands and farmers’ awareness to on-farm resource conservation. Over-exploitation of farm resources was negligible and disturbance to agro-ecology was minimal in the past couple of decades. In the last decade, however, due to a massive sprawl in the available farmlands along with a shift of subsistence farming towards market-oriented conventional approach, prime agricultural lands have been overexploited. This led to negative repercussion on production base and farmers’ livelihoods. This paper concerns with the simulation of farm income through spatial modeling considering the strategy of sustainable soil management practices. Spatial modeling shows higher farm income gains due to intervention in rural areas (low income zone) and periurban areas (high income zone) with existing unsustainable soil management practices. Spatial explicit assessment shows that integration of micro-survey into spatial environment and subsequently modeling of present and future situation would add more information on the results from conventional surveys. Therefore spatial effects should be duly considered while formulating agriculture and rural development policies.