Peasant household type and its land use pattern in Melamchi basin of central mountainous area in Nepal

Abstract: Changes in household livelihood strategy have provided a new research perspective for land utilization changes. By means of questionnaire survey, semi-structured interview, mathematical statistics and other research methods, this research conducts a systematic investigation on the households and land plots of 4 typical villages located at the Melamchi basin in the central mountainous areas in Nepal. Then based on the income combinations, this research classifies the peasant households into 4 types, which are pure agriculture type, agriculture-dependent type, non-farming-dependent type and non-agriculture type. With above classification, the analysis is carried out on different types of households' livelihood strategies and land use patterns, in terms of the number of land plots, the area of land, the renting of land, the arrangement of labor forces and the yield-increasing input and so on. Through contrastive study on different types of households' perceptions and strategies of livelihood improving, this paper analyzes their influences on land use and comes up with the suggestions including properly utilizing land resources as well as improving household livelihood capability and level. The results show that different types of households reflect different characteristics in their family scale, family member, labor allocation, age structure and cultural level. To be specific, for the households of agriculture-dependent type and non-farming-dependent type, their livelihood strategy combination is better and livelihood diversity index is higher, and hence they possess relatively lower livelihood risks. Different households' land use patterns are obviously different. From the angle of the area of land, land area per household and per capita, it can be summarized as the sequence of agriculture-dependent type>pure agriculture type>non-farming-dependent type>non-agriculture type. Among these, the households of agriculture-dependent type possess the largest renting land coverage. From the perspective of cultivating land structure, various types of households all plant food crops as the primary crop, whereas relatively fewer households and fewer lands focus on economic crops. Comparatively, the households of agriculture-dependent type occupy the highest proportion and area of economic crop planning; as for labor input, agriculture-dependent type has the largest labor input and their male labor proportion is the highest as well; as for land yield-increasing input, the proportion of households using fertilizer in Helambu Village shows agriculture-dependent type>pure agriculture type>non-farming-dependent type, but the proportion of households in the other 3 villages shows non-farming-dependent type>pure agriculture type>agriculture-dependent type. And non-farming-dependent type occupies the largest land yield-increasing input per unit area land. Because different types of households' perceptions and strategies of livelihood improving are not same, their influences on land use are varied. The largest demands of households are to establish irrigation facilities, increase agricultural yield-increasing input, improve breeding technology guide, enhance skill training and increase local employment opportunities, encourage loans with interest subsidy or lower interest, and construct roads and so on. And they are important measures to reduce the rate of land reclamation. Non-agricultural livelihood activities will not only reduce the vulnerability and risks of livelihood, but also reduce household's dependency degree and reclamation ratio to the land, which will promote the change of land ownership and land re-distribution and improve agricultural production rate. However, this will also increase the risk of land quality devolution and environmental pollution. Given the resource environment features in the mountainous areas of Nepal and unfavorable factors hindering the improvement of households' livelihood, this paper comes up with feasible strategies of improving household's livelihood and promoting the sustainable utilization of land from both household level and regional level.