Palpa. Jit Bahadur Chhahari of Phek in Ribdikot Rural Municipality has been celebrating this year’s Dashain and Tihar with the income he earned from the sale of chillies.

He said that although it was difficult to celebrate the festival in the past due to financial constraints, this year there was a good income from the sale of chillies produced at home. “Earlier, it was difficult to manage expenses, but now it has become easier to sell chillies, we don’t have to borrow money from others to celebrate the festival,” he said.

This year, he earned four lakh rupees by selling chillies before Dashain. He said that he has started cultivating chili peppers after it became difficult to protect him from wildlife while growing crops. According to him, chilli farming is the source of livelihood for most of the small farmers here.

Sita Khamcha, a local, said they did not have to look for loan to celebrate the festival this year. According to him, the income earned from the sale of chillies before Dashain was the source of the festival. He said, “In the past years, I used to think that Dashain and Tihar would not come. There was no source of income, they had to make their children happy by asking for loans. Now that I have started cultivating chillies, it has become easier. So far, he has earned more than Rs 4 lakh by selling chillies. ’

Not only Chhahari and Khamcha, most of the small farmers here have been earning a lot by selling Akbare chillies. Pragya Lamtange, chief of the agriculture section of the rural municipality, said that the local government, Prime Minister Agriculture Modernization Project and other bodies have started supporting the farmers for chili farming.

There are no houses without chili cultivation now after the local government started coordinating for the marketing of the produced. He said that farmers have started commercial chilli farming as an alternative after monkeys, deer, deer started troubling the arable land in the rural areas during the day and porcupines and boars at night.

According to farmers, the local government started cultivating chili for commercial farming after the local government started encouraging farmers who had planted only two to four saplings for household purpose. According to Lamtange, the rural municipality has started attracting farmers towards commercial farming as a campaign to make them financially strong and self-reliant and to discourage foreign employment.

According to him, more than four million rupees have been collected in the rural municipality from the sale of chillies before the Dashain festival. The chili produced by the farmers here is marketed through cooperatives.

Foreign employment was becoming a major destination in recent times as the narrative that nothing happens in agriculture was developing. Narayan Bahadur GC, former chairperson of the rural municipality, said that he started chilli farming with an investment of more than Rs 40 million to cultivate chili as an alternative to foreign employment.