Plan to revive sheep farming in Sikles
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KASKI, JAN 22 -
Man Bahadur Gurung, 45, recalls how as a child he drove flocks of sheep across green mountain pastures in the village to graze.
“My grandfather had more than 800 sheep in his farm. Down to my father’s time, the number dropped to 100,”
said Gurung, a resident of Sikles village
to the north-east of Pokhara in the
country’s Western region. “Back then,
each household in the village was
involved in sheep farming. A single family owned 300 to 700 sheep.”
These days, no family owns such a large number of sheep as a decade ago and a handful of families are involved in sheep farming in the village. “Presented with the opportunities of joining the British or Indian army or the option of other kinds of foreign employment, a very small number of people are involved the traditional business of sheep-herding and growing crops. Every household has its member working in a foreign land,” Gurung said. Some 2,100 people live in 371 households in the village.
Sheep herding was an inevitable activity of the ethnic Gurung community in the village perched on the hills of Lamjung Himal and Annapurna II range for ages. Historically, the Gurungs were animal herders, and were dependent on large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats for their livelihood.
A former chairman of the Parche VDC, where Sikles is located, Gurung plans to revive the traditional occupation as a source of livelihood in the community and to promote culture that is losing appeal to the new generation.
He, along with three other villagers, started a project on sheep farming in the village to encourage people to promote the job for their livelihood.
There are 700 sheep in the farm started last year with an investment of Rs 3 million. “The main objective of the project is to encourage youths to work in their own village in the fields of sustainable agriculture and commercial farming,” Gurung said. “Women used to weave clothes for each family member. But in recent years, due to fall in the number of sheep, employment opportunity for women is declining,” said Maya Devi Gurung, chairperson of the Mothers’ Group in the village.
“If the youths can work in sheep farms in Australia, New Zealand and Gulf countries, why can’t they do the same in their own land and make a decent living?” Gurung wonders.
Posted on: 2012-01-22 08:56
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