Farming Differentiation in the Rural-urban Interface of the Middle Mountains, Nepal: Application of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) Modeling

This article investigates the dominant factors of farming differentiation in the rural-urban interface of the densely populated Kathmandu valley using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Rural-urban interface of Kathmandu valley is an important vegetable production pocket supplying a large amount in the city core. While subsistence farming in the rural area is characterized traditional farming integrating livestock, forestry with agriculture; intensification in the urban fringe is characterized by triple crop rotations, intensive vegetable production and market oriented modern farming. Seven factors which were supposed to cause farming variation in the interface were incorporated in the AHP framework and were subjected to farmers’ judgment in distinctly delineated three farming zones. These factors played crucial yet different roles in different farming zones. Inaccessibility and use of local resources; higher yield and accessibility and agro-ecological consideration and quality production are the key impacting factors towards subsistence, commercial inorganic and smallholder organic zones respectively. The quantification of the impacting factors of farming differentiation through AHP is an important piece of information that will contribute to modeling farming in the rural-urban interface in developing countries which represent diversity of farming practices and rapidly changing land use pattern.