Thirty Years of Agrarian Change at an Upper Elevation Village in Western Nepal

In 2016, I returned to Chimkhola, a village whose farming system I had studied in detail in the mid-1980s. Living conditions, child mortality, education levels had all improved greatly. Remissions from family members working overseas were supplanting subsistence farming. Community resources include agricultural fields and forests from 1600 to 4000 m on the southeast flank of Dhaulagiri Himal. I seek to preserve an account of the complex farming system the community used in 1986, describe how it appears to be dissolving, and speculate on the future. Unlike many parts of Nepal, in 2016 the people of Chimkhola farmed without industrial inputs, as they did in 1986. However, they reduced the area they were farming. It seems likely that, if recent trends continue, the communal system will collapse.