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 denselypopulated Kathmandu Valley, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) modeling. The rural-urban interfacein the Kathmandu Valley is an important vegetable production pocket which supplies a large amount of thevegetables in the city core. While subsistence farming in the rural area is characterized by a system whichintegrates livestock and forestry with agriculture, the intensification in the urban fringe is characterized by triplecrop rotations and market-oriented intensive vegetable production. Seven factors which were supposed to causefarming variation in the interface were incorporated in the AHP framework and then subjected to the farmers’judgment in distinctly delineated three farming zones. These factors played crucial yet differing roles in differentfarming zones. Inaccessibility and use of local resources; higher yield and accessibility and agro-ecologicalconsideration and quality production are the key impacting factors of subsistence, commercial inorganic andsmallholder organic farming respectively. The quantification of such factors of farming differentiation throughAHP is an important piece of information that will contribute in modeling farming in the rural-urban interface ofdeveloping countries which are characterized by a high diversity of farming practices and are undergoing a rapidchange in the land use pattern