BACKGROUND:

Based on the report presented by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published on year
1995 (1), Himalayan region of Nepal accounts for about 28 per cent of the total area and
practiced agriculture is livestock based with little cropping. Conditions are extreme and food
deficits are common. Similarly, The Hill regions accounts for about 55 percent of the total land
area and around 38 percent of the agricultural land. The area is characterized by high ridges and
steep slopes around numerous streams giving rise to many microclimates.

Generally, the area above 1500m accounts for nearly 40 percent of farming. Relatively the area
should have geographical advantages as it could be the prime location for off-seasonal farming,
new varieties farming and importantly, placing offset market with low price, high competitive
import goods. This must have led to edify the income situation of the famers.

However farming above the altitude of 1500 m during winter months like Mangsir, Poush,
Magh, Fagun is nearly limited and the cropping cycle are relatively longer than expected, which
often leads to low profit margin or even sometimes fallow. Post effect of these situations is seen
on those livelihoods where people are fully depended on agriculture. Loss of cultivation during
these 4-5 months hits harder on their basic livelihoods as they miss out the precious seasons of
production. The risk remains to those who try to fight back to those climates with less knowledge
and poor infrastructure such as poorly designed greenhouse, overly expensive systems and such.

Many problems arise on farming out of which is the circulation of inefficient Greenhouses. The
high tech greenhouse promoted by Government of Nepal (GoN) even fails from the highest as
farmers cannot cope with high capital cost and high operating cost verse the fluctuating market
price. Technically, the designs of the greenhouse followed in Nepal are practiced without any
proper study and knowledge of energy calculations, solar – wind orientation or local climatic
consideration which results to unbalance between financials advantage of having the
sophisticated system with the current markets price of the commodities and majorly,
discouragement of farming over those places and time.
EXISTING PRACTISES:

Albeit the farming over those places is a difficult task there are many alternatives and options
that has been implemented and practiced. Out of few strategies to control farming, manage yield
proportion and off-seasonal production some of the most popular ones are:

 Cultivating on Raised bed covered with plastics

Often winter season farming is done on raised bed which is covered with plastics.
The idea is to create a mini temperature zone to create a warm environment
suitable for crops to grow.

Raised bed covered with plastics are often hard to supervise, monitor and perform
the farming activities like soil application, foliar application etc. Such beds are
made on low scale to cultivate few crop items and hence it really doesn't help the
farmer to scale their income.

Figure 1 Raised Bed Covered by plastics

 Government subsided High tech Tunnels:

Nepal Government is trying to help in many ways to promote farming and pass
technologies to the sector. Many technologies such as mulch, green house,
plastics, tractors, machinery items are highly subsidized. Talking specifically on
 green house, the problem doesn’t lie on the subsidization but on the validation
how it is been subsidized. In name of High tech tunnels and green house, many
farmers has incorporated the sophisticated high tech greenhouse which has back
fired on the longer run because of heavy operating cost.

Government is doing a really good job on subsidizing and promoting modern

agriculture meanwhile it has overlooked the other value chains and the situation
of the agriculture of Nepal right now. The produces from high tech subsidized
system doesn’t even have the market guarantee let alone the price guarantee,
which makes the high tech greenhouse quite not feasible in respect to Cost of
production and financial burden on its own.

Figure 2 A high tech nursery house planting leafy crops. (2)

 Low tech inefficient Green house

Out of the not-so-financially acceptable solutions, low tech Green house was the
answer to many farmers during the winter seasons. Many farmers realized the
importance of having a low tech, low cost effective solution to control the
environment of the farming. The popularity of such low tech is increasing
however it is still done in unscientific way.
The on-going practiced design of low tech greenhouse has often overlooked
thorough knowledge on materials selection, orientations, dimensioning and
energy calculation, which had led to problems like high temperature fluctuation
between day-night time, unhealthy growth of seedlings and uncontrollable
environment.

Figure 3 Low tech greenhouse using UV Plastics (3)

SCOPE OF WORK

After a year round observation on greenhouse practices that is being circulated around the
country, we found out that the existing solutions really don't match with the essences of having a
greenhouse. The ideal greenhouse should facilitate controllable environment, off-season
production, suitable temperature and humidity, year round production meanwhile aiding for on-
demand management of buyer, prior production planning and high yield.

Consideration the above fundamentals of greenhouses intact, we aim to have these following
straight objectives:

 To learn and build the most feasible, affordable and energy efficient green house with the
use of locally available materials and resources.
 To work on design of greenhouse based on passive heating principles along with
renewable energy as a supplement system.
 To be able to scale and transfer the knowledge to different territories.
 To make the project impactful that will help to ameliorate the income status of the
affected places.

METHODOLOGY:

To reach our objective that aims to build a scalable passive heated greenhouse using locally
available materials and resource, the following methodologies is planned to be done:

 First of all, we will establish many hypotheses using the literatures, knowledge and
expertise.
 Different virtual models will be modeled and simulated using the meticulous software
available.
 Result from those models will be thoroughly inspected as well as analyzed.
 After the successfully simulation, the model will be verified on real farm with real
materials and real time weather.
 The verification will be done using different models on the same identical location.
 Further inspection and analyze will be done monitoring real time parameters like
temperatures, humidity, growth and health of plants etc.
  These findings will be properly analyzed with the territory`s geography and climatic
parameters which later would be converted into a saleable and transferrable model.

TEAM

 Lead Partner: Kathmandu University

o A well renowned and motivated educational intuition that has been working on
research and development since its establishment.
o Under the supervision of Dr. Bivek Baral, a strong team has been working on
energy efficient environment system for many couple of years.
o Furnished with well-equipped labs, workshops, tools and handles.
 Institution Partner:

 Industrial Partner: SunFarmer Nepal Pvt. Ltd.

o Can facilitate with the farm, local materials and agriculture expertise for the on-
field trial of the models.
o Have connections with farmers from different territory which can be reached if
needed.

COMMERCIAL VIABILITY:

Indifferent to any motive of selling the product, our prime objective is to build the most suitable
greenhouse that will work on local level with local consideration of farming practices, materials,
policies, communities and resources. The market is already overcrowded with unsupervised
greenhouses and misled high-end technologies that we feel were never required.

Our strategy for commercialization is to transfer the model and knowledge to different part of the
country through active working governmental, non-governmental and international non-
governmental bodies. We are aiming not to work particularly on product rather on knowledge,
which will make us able to work on different situations, climatic conditions and communities.
 REFERENCES

1. Nepal Agricultural Research Council. COUNTRY REPORT: TO THE FAO

INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL CONFERENCE ON PLANT GENETICS RESOURCES.
Kathmandu : s.n., June 1995.

2. Horticulture Mission for North East and Himalyan State. [Online] September 19, 2014.
[Cited: March 13, 2019.] http://www.tmnehs.gov.in/Forms/photogallerylist.aspx?catid=92#ad-
image-0.

3. Documentaries, AIRC National. Youtube . [Online] January 23, 2012. [Cited: March 13,
2019.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy72pRX6hJw.