a) Increase in agricultural production and productivity:

• Agricultural production and productivity will be increased by utilizing the local potentialities, comparative advantages and special opportunities and ensuring the development, extension and utilization to appropriate agricultural technologies. Besides, additional opportunities of income and employment will be created by laying emphasis on the commercialization and diversification of agriculture.
• A scientific land-use system will be used and the non-agricultural use of fertile agricultural land will be discouraged. A scientific use of land will be promoted by making use of appropriate technologies to manage steep land in the hilly areas and to develop agricultural land in the Terai and plain valleys.
• Irrigation faculties, agricultural roads, rural electrification and appropriate agricultural technologies will be developed and expanded. In areas with irrigation, road and electricity facilities, arrangements will be made to ensure both intensive and extensive uses of the available technologies.
• Special priority will be given to the development of pockets of high-value agricultural products in feasible areas adjoining the north-south highways and feeder roads. Production of low-weight and high-value agricultural products will be given priority especially in the remote areas.
• The local bodies will be entrusted with the tasks of formulating, implementing and monitoring agriculture plans suitable to the local needs and priorities; and thus, made responsible and competent. Necessary support will be provided to this through a system of supplying grants on a conditional basis.
• Such comparatively large projects as those which cover more than one district, promote potential agricultural production and enterprises and thus create the basis of commercialization will be operated and supported as central projects with the participation of the local bodies. For the purpose of implementing this policy, the central level department and directorates will be made responsible incompetent.
• Farmers groups will be utilized to provide onsite extension services relating to food, nutrition and agricultural technologies. Package programs relating to extension of agricultural technologies will be operated in a coordinated manner even by agricultural forestry colleges in their areas of influence. Besides, the information technology and means of mass communication will also be used in agricultural extension activities.
• National Agricultural Resource Centers will be developed and strengthened as resource centers for high-quality inputs for those who produce local seed, seedlings, plants and breeds and as resource centers for special technological services for entrepreneurs and businessmen engaged in such activities as collecting, processing, storing and transporting agricultural products, on the basis of development regions and geographical sub-zones.
• A participatory and competitive agricultural research and development system will be promoted with the participation also of the private and non-governmental sectors in order to undertake such agricultural research activities. The process of cooperating and exchanging technology and experts with international organization connected with agricultural research and development activities will be encouraged.
• Private and foreign investments in the field of agricultural research and development will be encouraged by providing for such appropriate incentives as allowing the private and non-governmental sectors to deduct as expenses for the purposes of tax the funds spent by them on agricultural research and development activities.
• The supply or the main production inputs (improved livestock, fingerlings, chemical fertilizer, seeds, etc.) will be guaranteed by regularly monitoring their imports, production and stocks.
• The flow of agricultural credit needed for the promotion of agricultural production and enterprises will be guaranteed buy linking the same with the returns of production and enterprises.
• A survey/surveillance system will be established and activated in order to assess (the impact) of excessive rains, droughts, diseases, insects and other natural calamities and mobilize agricultural relief.
• Special emphasis will be laid on the farmers training program in order to improve the efficiency of farers at the local level.
• Agricultural and forestry universities will be established and agricultural and forestry colleges will be promoted in order to produce agricultural manpower.
• The system of collecting, analyzing and projecting data needed for formulating plans, determining policies and carrying out monitoring and evaluation operations connected with the agricultural sector will be strengthened.
• The extent of the involvement and participation of women in all possible fields of the operation of agricultural programs will be raised to 50 percent. The flow of information and data relating to the involvement of women in the programs will be ensured.
• Opportunities of gaining access to lands will be created by effectively implementing and monitoring the current legal ceilings on landholdings.
• A land bank will be established, and with the participation of the local bodies arrangements will be made to provide information services relating to the availability of agriculture lands to those who wish to buy/sell such lands for agriculture operations.
• Seeds and saplings and technical services will be provided free of cost to farmers belonging to the depressed and oppressed classes and other marginal farmers and landless agriculture laborers who request for the same by organizing themselves into groups and acquiring agricultural land, ponds, marshes, reservoirs or riverbanks under lease or contractual arrangements with a view to engaging in agricultural production operations.
• For the purposes of upgrading forests and other lands providing support to the task of alleviating poverty, marginal lands, pastures, degraded forest and waster public lands will be handed over to the target communities under lease agreements for being used, according to feasibility, as farms to cultivate.
• Special facilities will be provided to the target groups to build and install such infrastructures of small irrigation as pedal pumps, rower pumps, sprinklers, drips and water harvesting ponds.
• Potential means of increasing production and income will be utilized in order to increase the availability of food in food-deficit areas. Besides, a network of storing and mobilizing food will be developed with the participation of the local bodies in such tasks as transporting storing and distributing food when it becomes essential to ensure the supply of food on elsewhere.
• The food stuff, transportation, commodity price, interest and other facilities to be provided by the government will be provided on a priority basis by identifying areas and groups facing a risk from the viewpoint of food security.
• Food safety nets will be gradually developed for farmers with less than half a hectare of land, farmers lacking year-long irrigation facilities and landless and marginal farmers lacking other sources of income, in order to help them cope with situation of climatic fluctuations and other calamities.

b) Development of a commercial and competitive farming system:

• Large production pockets will be developed to produce agricultural products in quantities and of qualities that match the demands of the market. In such pockets, priority will be given to the production of such agricultural products as have comparative advantages.
• In areas adjoining food-deficit hilly regions where the food supply program is to be operated the local production of food grains will be encouraged by purchasing locally produced food grains at market prices under the food supply program.
• A double track management system will be adopted in governmental farms/centers with a view to ensuring the maximum possible utilization of the resources available with them by launching commercial programs also without affecting their prescribed objectives.
• The livestock insurance program will be extended. Besides, poultry, seeds of selected crops and high-value agricultural products will be gradually insured.
• Organic farming will be encouraged. Necessary support will be provided for the certification of the standard of exportable agricultural products produced in production areas based on organic farming.
• The production and use of high-breed seeds and improved breeds will be encouraged and the use of genetically- modified organism will be regulated.
• Traditional, local, original agricultural products and the related technologies will be registered and promoted.
• Agricultural training will be classified into two categories, namely, capacity-improvement training and enterprise-promotion training. Capacity improvement training programs will be used to improve the capacities of agricultural workers and raise the production capacities of farmers.
• Arrangements will be made to train educated but unemployed youths in the establishment and operation of agricultural enterprises so as to attract them to agricultural occupations.
• The local production, sale and distribution of improved agricultural resource inputs (seeds, plants saplings, breeds, fingerlings, etc.) as well as the sale and distribution of manure, insecticides and pesticides, will be regulate and quality will be maintained in their supply.
• The agriculture and livestock quarantine services will be systematized and strengthened in order to ensure the production of high-quality agricultural products and raise their credibility in the local and external markets.
• The participation of the local bodies also will be mobilized in such tasks as determining, controlling certifying and regulating the quality-standard of food stuffs.
• Regulatory services relating to agricultural products will be gradually updated as per the provisions of international treaties and agreements and the national requirements.
• Priority will be given to the promotion of cooperative-based agricultural industries and enterprises.
• The process of commercializing the agricultural sector will be provided with necessary support by effectively mobilizing the Agricultural Industry and Enterprise Promotion Board to analyze and provide outlets of the complaints and suggestions of agricultural entrepreneurs, industrialists progressive farmers and related organizations and associations.
• Commodity and subject policies equipped with incentives will be developed in order to attract the cooperative and private sectors to make investments in the commercial production, processing and marketing of agricultural products.
• A separate agricultural industry development policy will be formulated and implemented in order to interlink agricultural research, agricultural production, agricultural processing industries and internal and external export markets and attract external investments, in accordance with the priorities of the agricultural sector.
• The agricultural technology extension services will be made fee-based in the potential areas of commercial agricultural production and the private, cooperative and non-governmental sectors will be attracted to that field.
• The operation of suitable farms/centers by the private sector on the basis of contract/lease agreements will be encouraged.
• The tasks of developing and extending a market information system and disseminating such information will be carried out in partnership with the private and cooperative sectors and the local bodies.
• For the purpose of guaranteeing opportunities for marketing the commercial production of agricultural products, the establishment of collection centers near the potential production centers will be encouraged and for the purpose of guaranteeing organized markets near large numbers of potential consumers, the process of developing and expanding well-equipped wholesale and seasonal markets under the cost-participation and management of the private and cooperative sectors will be encouraged.
• Industries and entrepreneurs bringing internal agricultural producers together under a contractual production system and substituting imports or promoting exports will be provided with capital and other incentives/facilities on the recommendation of the Agricultural Enterprise Promotion Board.
• Groups of potential farmers and entrepreneurs will be gradually developed along the line of cooperatives in order to ensure an institutional development of cooperatives by mobilizing and promoting local small capital and other resources.