Human security of smallholders: An anthropological study of vegetable farmers in Kirtipur, Kathmandu

Abstract

This study examines the human security situation of smallholders in Kirtipur Municipality in Kathmandu. They produce fresh vegetables for household consumption and cash earning by selling in the local markets. Grounded in the political ecology of human security framework that combines 'risk society' perspectives, the study explores how the smallholders navigate multiple and intersecting insecurities in the context of a rapidly urbanizing capital city of Nepal characterized by the changing population dynamics, marketing of local crops, and shifting priorities of the urban governance. It is a year long ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2022 that employs qualitative methods including participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and life histories supplemented by enough secondary data. It examine son going transformation in the land use system and changes in the traditional framing practices which has eventually led to the emergence of new mode of vegetable farming dominated by the migrant farmers. It brings farmers’ lived experiences, perceptions, and everyday practices at the center in relation to the pressing issues of insecure land tenure, volatile markets, rising production costs, environmental degradation, and limited state support. The findings reveal that due to the rapid and unplanned urban transformation over the decades has contributed for the emergence of a new peri-urban marginal community in the Kathmandu Valley in Kirtipur. The community has been facing the insecure and uncertain threats of all the major aspects of human security; economic, legal and political, ecological, and socio-cultural. It further shows that the farmers are not only aware about the threats and the consequences on their lives and livelihoods in that insecure condition but have been actively seeking for the strategies to respond risk and enhance security. Among the strategies they have adopted to ensure the secure situation are; technological, institutional, political and spiritual. The study also shows that despite the range of strategies adopted by the farmers their human security situation in Kirtipur is not safe and free from the risks and uncertainties. As a result, the migrant farmers perceive vegetable farming not as a stable or inter generational livelihood but as a transitional or stoppage strategy, pursued to secure education, mobility, and alternative futures for household members, particularly the next generation. The study concludes that the human security situation of the smallholders of Kirtipur is determined by the new mode of urban farming itself that is undertaken within the large numbers of threats and uncertainties and the limited capacity of the modern state functioning within the global 'risk society'. By centering farmers’ narratives and everyday practices, this ethnography of smallholders contributes to the anthropology of agriculture and the political ecology of human security, offering critical insights into how marginal urban farmers negotiate survival, uncertainty, and aspiration at the edge of Kathmandu’s transforming agrarian future. Keywords: Human security, Kirtipur, smallholders, political ecology, vegetable farming