Growing up, I thought “agriculture” meant two things: mud on your slippers and the smell of fresh cow dung in the air. The word alone evoked green fields, earthy scents, and the image of a farmer wiping sweat with pride under the sun. We were told it’s our culture, our dignity, our roots.
But no one ever said it could be our career. Our future. Our innovation. Our enterprise.
And if we keep treating it as a sentimental artifact instead of a strategic powerhouse, we’ll keep losing both crops and common sense.
When I tell people I study agriculture, I often get two reactions.
One: “Oh... so you didn’t get into MBBS?”
Two: “Who studies agriculture for four years just to become a full-time dung manager?”
I smile politely. But let’s be honest, it’s frustrating.
See, if someone wants to be a doctor, they study medicine. You want to be a bank manager? You take finance. A food technologist? You go to food tech. But agriculture? Somehow, that’s everyone’s Plan B.
The backup of all backup plans. The “If nothing works, I’ll just do farming” mindset.
And the very thing we depend on every single day, for our food, economy, and festivals is the one thing we prepare for the least.
And young people, they're running away from it like it’s contagious. Every year, thousands migrate abroad chasing jobs, because they see no future in farming. Not because agriculture is broken, but because we’ve failed to make it aspirational. We've told them farming is for those who had "no better option," not for those with big ideas. So instead of staying to transform it, they leave. And the fields they leave behind grow emptier with crops, hope, and innovation all drying up together.
We still frame agriculture as a poor man’s job. Something to escape from. We don’t encourage curiosity, creativity, or ambition in this field.
When we say “agriculture is our culture,” it often becomes an excuse to keep things traditional stuck in time, manually driven, and underfunded.
I’ve seen farmers invest years of hard labor, only to watch their harvest rot in the sun for lack of cold storage. I’ve watched relatives plant the same crop season after season because “that’s what we’ve always done” even as market prices crash. No data. No diversification. No business model. Because no one told them farming also needs a strategy.
Meanwhile, other countries are turning agriculture into high-performing industries powered by data, AI, satellite imaging, and precision irrigation. They’re building vertical farms, investing in cold chains, weather forecasting, and market access.
Look at Israel, a desert nation, or the Netherlands, a country with limited land; both have transformed their agricultural sectors into export powerhouses through strategic investment and innovation.
We forget that agriculture isn’t just soil and seeds. It’s a multi-layered game of politics, economics, science, and survival.
And sadly, we’re still playing it barefoot while the rest of the world shows up in boots, drones, and data dashboards.
Agriculture employs around 60 percent of Nepal’s population, yet contributes only 25 percent to our GDP.
You see the mismatch? It’s like sending the whole village to build a bridge without giving them a blueprint or tools. Everyone’s working, sweating, committed… but the bridge still collapses.
We’re working hard but not necessarily smart.
Think of agriculture not as a field to work on, but as a battlefield of ideas, innovation, and policy. Countries that treat agri as strategy are building food independence, export empires, and tech-driven supply chains.
Meanwhile, countries that treat it like folklore are importing even garlic.
And one more thing: climate change doesn’t care about your culture. Neither do pests, nor market volatility.
They respond to strategy. If your strategy is tradition alone, you’re not farming. You’re gambling.
Agriculture is culture, yes. But that’s only half the story. The other half is power.
Food is power. Land is power. And whoever controls it not just physically but strategically writes the next chapter of national development.
It’s time to shift our mindset from sentiment to strategy, from preservation to progress. It’s a call to policymakers, educators, and young change makers to see our fields not as fading traditions, but as the foundation of a new future.
Culture makes us proud.
Strategy makes us unstoppable.
And between pride and progress, I’d like to have both, please, with a side of sustainability.
(The author is a BSc Agriculture student at IAAS, TU Lamjung.)
