Kankada is a village around 190 km away from Kathmandu and as such it is more underdeveloped than the capital. Many inhabitants of the village Kankada VDC Ward No.1 belong to the disadvantaged groups of Chepang, Tamang and Kami. Their main source of income is the sale of traditional made honey known as “Apis Cerena”. In order to systemise and increase the proceeds of the honey sale for the improvement of the situation of the farmers, the Janachetana Agriculture Cooperative Ltd. Makwanpur was established in 2006 with the help from the NGO called MDI Nepal (formerly SAPROC Nepal). MDI Nepal supported the cooperative for registration providing cooperative education and some funds to establish the cooperative and a honey collection centre in Lothar. Then the cooperative started to collect honey from the farmers. The collection centre was advertised  on the stone and wall of the street.

Since the cooperative was offering better price than local traders, the collection centre was soon overwhelmed by the huge interest of the farmers who wanted to sell their honey to them. They  had to temporarily close the collection centre because of storing and buying capacity constraints.The cooperative had also not been able to find a market for the honey. At this point, the Marketing Manager Mr. Dinesh Chepang said that the farmers got discouraged because they had set high hopes in the cooperative. Finally, Janachetana Agriculture Cooperative Ltd. was able to make an agreement with the honey processing company called Himalayan Honey that agreed to buy all the raw honey that the cooperative collected from the farmers. However, quality standard of the collected honey was one of the main concerns of Himalayan Honey.

In cooperation with INCLUDE Janachetana Agriculture Cooperative Ltd. worked among others on the quality improvement of their honey. INCLUDE supported a Beekeeping Training for farmers and a Processing and Storage Technique Training as well as some required technical equipments. The farmers use now better utensils and also have improved their honey collection techniques. Therefore, from 2010 onwards Himalayan Honey agreed to pay an additional 25 Rs. per kg. With the assistance of INCLUDE the cooperative was also able to rent a second storage room in Monahari to expand their honey collection business. In 2009 they sold five tons of honey and for 2010 a sale of seven tons of honey is expected.

Mr. Dinesh Chepang from Janachetana Agricuture Cooperative Ltd. participated in a Training of Trainers (ToT) on “Cooperative Management and Value Chain Development” that was organised by GTZ/INCLUDE in Butwal and now he himself goes to the villages and trains farmers in cooperative management issues. An important positive impact of the initiative is that young people now have an incentive to stay in their village because of the additional income opportunities in the beekeeping business. 200 Chepang families (more than 1,100 individuals) in the VDCs Kakada, Rakirsang and Manahari are benefiting from the activities supported by INCLUDE. Being subsidence farmers that are having only one or two beehives each, the income of the families is expected to increase by 4,500 NPR annually.

By Sabitri Chaudhary and Depesh Chackalamuriyil