The Women Farmers Reviving Unused Land in Nepal with Agroecology
A once abandoned plot in rural Nepal now grows 22 local crops, feeding an entire family. Here's how Radhika revived this land with natural farming.
Radhika Mahato is a smallholder farmer in Sarlahi, Nepal. For years, she farmed the way most people around her did: one crop at a time, with chemical pesticides from the local shop, and she would buy most vegetables at the market. Most farming decisions were made by male family members, and she used to travel a long way to her field to farm every day.
That started to change when she joined hands-on training sessions run by our local partner RWUA (Rural Women’s Upliftment Association). The sessions introduced a different way of thinking about farming, built around what farmers already have access to rather than what they need to buy.
Radhika learned to prepare her own fertilizers and pest treatments using materials available around her home and village. She learned to make jeevamrit, a fermented liquid that feeds the soil, and agniastra, a homemade spray for pest outbreaks. Back on her own field, she started putting these methods into practice. The chemical pesticides she used to buy each season were no longer necessary. She was spending less, depending less on the shop, and beginning to make farming decisions on her own. And she began to notice the unused land around her.
Her neighbor’s plot—about 1.5 kattha, roughly half a tennis court—had been sitting abandoned for years, wild and overgrown. Confident in her new skills and knowledge Radhika offered her neighbor to bring it back to life and share a portion of the produce. The neighbor agreed, at no cost.
That arrangement gave her access to additional land in a region where many women farmers work fields they do not legally control. The plot sits close to her family home, on what is locally known as bari land—small kitchen garden plots used for vegetables, herbs and household crops.
The garden functions like a self-regenerating system. She converts household organic waste into manure and uses crop residues to feed the family’s goat, which in turn produces manure for the fields. Buffalo urine that she used to discard is now carefully collected to fertilize her fields. Everything cycles back—waste, residues, animal manure—and nothing needs to be bought in.
The farm’s diversity developed gradually. With support from RWUA, she moved from single cropping to a dense, mixed system growing 22 local crops—potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, peas, radish, coriander, okra, pumpkins, cucumber, brinjal, bitter gourd, kidney beans, spinach, mustard greens, and several local beans and leafy vegetables. Each plant contributes something different to the system, such as fixing nitrogen, breaking up soil, or holding moisture, and they support one another. Over seasons, soil health improved, making the plot more resilient to climate shocks. When one crop fails due to pests, farmers can fall back on what’s still growing. It can also contribute to a rich, diverse diet with key nutrients.
Radhika sources most of her seeds from her women’s group and from her maternal home, where local crop varieties have continued to circulate among families. She grows and preserves local yams, maize, beans and bottle gourd varieties alongside seasonal vegetables. In many rural parts of Nepal, these local seed systems have weakened as commercial hybrids have become more common. Small farmers often face pressure to buy seeds, fertilizers and pesticides each season, and these costs can quickly outweigh earnings on tiny plots. Rebuilding local seed networks and soil fertility using materials farmers already have reduces that dependence and gives farmers back control over what they grow and how.
For Radhika, this new knowledge has brought deep change to her daily life. Household spending on vegetables has fallen sharply because much of the food now comes from the farm. Expenditure on chemical inputs has almost disappeared, supporting her crops and her family’s overall health.
She also manages the entire cultivation process herself now, from seed sourcing to crop planning and input preparation, giving her more independence. She even involved her children in the farm’s day-to-day work to pass on her knowledge.
On half a tennis court of borrowed land, Radhika has built a circular farming system where waste feeds the soil, the soil feeds the crops, and the crops feed her family and livestock. Almost everything the farm needs, it produces itself.
Radhika’s story is one of many. RWUA works with over 300 women farmers across Sarlahi and beyond, helping them access agroecological training, rebuild local seed networks, and farm fertile land without chemicals.
“What was once a wild patch is now a living farm feeding my family, my livestock, and our future.”
Radhika, farmer, Nepal
