I am a farmer and I am Nepalese. The first grain of rice I consumed came from my own family’s field. I spent my childhood riding on the backs of buffalo, smelling the pleasant scent of fresh dung around me, wrestling with young goats and watching small chicks run behind their mothers in a chain-like manner. I have cut grasses and the maize stubbles for the cows; I have prepared feed for my cute chickens and I have planted seedlings of rice too – all during my childhood. I still remember the rice seedling I planted in a separate corner of the field so that I could recognize my plant. I watched them grow every day; how they produced panicles and how each spikelet grew to a fat and stout golden grain. I felt as if the plants were my own possession, as if they were my treasure. Now I know that the grains, the plants, and the animals were indeed my treasures: my lifelong wealth.

Those feelings, those smells, and those experiences today have led me to have a dream of becoming an agriculturist. As I study, learning the numerous methods of farming, I remember that this life – the life as an agriculturist – has been etched into my fate since birth, because I am Nepalese. Today, I seek advanced machines, fertilizer drills and harvesters that other advanced nations of the world are using and inventing day by day. But we must take heed that those nations have built those technologies for their own farming systems, agriculture, land, and for a world that smells completely different from ours. Let’s imagine a landlocked nation that insisted on using ships for travel and shipment, just because they were the cheapest means of transport: it would be a loss and completely useless. Thus, we must learn our own farming system that suits our terrain, that fits our soil; we must learn and develop the Nepalese farming system in our own context while remembering the absolute necessity that we shouldn’t be left behind, no matter what.

In the present context of our agriculture, what we need is our own technology, our own creation that digs best in our own terrains, that fertilizes and harvests best in our soil without depleting its natural quality. We must protect our indigenous crops and animals because they have survived with us and share our history. We must develop technologies and methods not to replace them, but which best suits our land and provides fruitful results. To accomplish this we need determination to develop what we don’t have and to protect what we already possess. We need to understand that we are farmers and that we are Nepalese.