The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously affected the agrarian and remittance-based economy of Nepal. Dwindling the employment opportunities and disrupting the food production and distribution channels, the pandemic has further exacerbated the unemployment and food insecurity situation. Providing employment opportunities and livelihood support to pandemic-affected households has, therefore, become increasingly challenging but a necessary priority to the government. Therefore, to build a sustainable and resilient economy that generates employment and enhance agricultural productivity, revitalization of the constraints-ridden agriculture sector is essential as it still contributes 65% and 24.3% to employment and Gross Domestic Product, respectively. Against this backdrop, this paper presents major pathways and priority actions to rebuild and revitalize the growth of the agricultural sector in Nepal while addressing the challenge posed by the pandemic to generate employment and income-earning opportunities. We emphasize the need for scale-appropriate strategies, programs and plans to build resilience of production, supply chains, and agribusiness systems. We conclude that the government should initially focus on targeted priority interventions to the pandemic-affected farmers and agro-entrepreneurs, and strengthen their productive, competitive, and adaptive capacities. These need to be followed by long-term strategies such as development of agricultural infrastructure, innovative policies, legal instruments, and institutional arrangements, including strengthening of the recently established local governments in line with the federal structure of Nepal.

Agriculture and Livestock Development is used to calculate the annual average yield of agricultural crops. The result shows that increment in production of cereal crops and vegetables is greater than area due to availability of irrigation facilities and fertilizers, use of improved and hybrid seeds and technological knowledge among the farmers. The percentage increase in area, production and productivity of cash crop in 2018/19 compared to 2009/10 is 18%, 34.38% and 14.1% respectively. The technological innovations and use of high yielding varieties has played a major role to increase production of pulses in Nepal. Among pulses, the winter crop lentil dominates in production (65.76%) as well as in area coverage (62.93%). There is greater increment in areas of fruits compared to production leading to 2% decrease in productivity of fruits in 2018/19 compared to 2009/10. Summer fruits shared 63% and 67.1% of total fruit productive areas and total fruit production respectively. More than 75% of total summer fruits area and production is shared by mango and banana. Citrus fruits shared about 23% of total fruit productive area and production. Winter fruits shared 13.22% of total productive area and 9.80% of total fruit production. In addition to modern technology, status of soil fertility, crop management practices, quality of seeds, climate and incidence of pests and diseases are responsible for fluctuation of agricultural production in Nepal.

Human development is possible only within planetary boundaries The tendency to pit economic development against the environment has led the world towards a dead end. Several voices called to reinterweave them, just as humanity is interwoven with the health of nonhuman natures and ultimately the planet. The notion of responsible wellbeing was suggested as being cognizant of the implications of consumption and accountability and the ways to factor in the interests of future generations. Responsible wellbeing for people and planet is about internalizing environmental and social costs in the true value of goods and services, recognizing that the value extends well beyond the monetary. It is about conceptualizing the systems underpinning humanity as socioecological or socionatural systems—and development as positive change in those systems. If we wish to celebrate another 30 years of human development, attention must extend to all societies and to the behaviour of citizens who have already achieved high levels of human development on traditional measures”