A Livelihood Comparative Study of Chepangs and Tamangs, Both Applying Agroforestry Intervention in Central Nepal

Abstract

This study is designed to identified the situation of agroforestry practices and its livelihood change within two ethnical communities such as chepangs¹ and tamangs² in Bharta Punyadevi village development committee (VDC) under Makwanpur district.A total of 63 agroforestry househols (32 from Chepangs HH and 31 from Tamangs) on the basis of purposive sampling within three (2,4 and 6) wards of Makwanpur district was chosen. Researcher collected primary data from standard questionnaires within a period of December 2014 to January 2015. The survey data were analysed ,converted into frequency and percentages using IBM SPSS Vol. 20 .After compilation of data reveals a summary report that both 93 per cent chepangs and tamangs reply that agroforestry is the main causes of improved livelihood,higher income gain due to it;49 per cent chepangs and 51 per cent tamangs students are going to school for education,100 per cent of both groups are using temporaty toilets besides sufficient availability of water source from own,chepangs are higher to get loan than tamangs as both are applying local merchants to take loan with an average of 18-24 per cent interest rates per monyhs.Wild foods was the common coping food habit in insecurity period for both the groups,development support is greater among chepangs than tamangs,100 per cent agroforestry users(both chepangs and tamangs) are now affiliated and active in social committee than previous situation was none of them before agroforestry practises,more than 90 per cent reply that traders collects  agroforestry products from villages and sent per cent resply that they are not getting the real market price of the product.