Low Cost Sustainable Agriculture Kits (SAKs) As an Agronomic Strategy to Improve Farmer's Livelihoods in Nepal.

The world’s 1.1 billion subsistence farmers do not have access to peer-reviewed knowledge of best agronomic practices, good seeds, or inexpensive farm tools. What is lacking is a means to package, deliver and share these technologies to farmers who earn $1-$2 per day. Like a restaurant menu, Sustainable Agriculture Kits (SAKs) are intended to be regional menus of private sector technologies and ecological practices – from which an individual farmer can purchase one or more items at a cost of $1 (ideally) to assemble a technology kit that is appropriate for his/her own needs. The items are intended for sale at stalls in villages. A SAK consists of 3 components: (1) locally approved seeds, (2) low cost tools and technologies focused on reducing female drudgery, and (3) an agricultural extension picture book to communicate best agronomic practices (indigenous and scientific) to empower illiterate farmers. In rural Nepal, following grassroots surveying of households, we are in the process of conducting on-farm agronomic trials to test the efficacy of the identified SAKs. In parallel, we are scaling up SAK products and practices that have previously been validated, using participatory approaches. To enable distribution of these products, we are piggybacking onto a pre-existing snackfood distribution network as well as the franchises of a Nepalese private seed company. The picture book of best agronomic practices is open access and available online.