Ms. Rada Pudasaini is 38 years old. Her husband is a veterinary technician. They have a son (22) and daughter(18). She lives in Bagmara village, Namtar VDC, ward 4, Makwanpur district in Nepal. Together with her husband she manages the farm, although she is more engaged as her husband who runs a small veterinary shop in the village as well. The main farming activity is goat keeping. At present she has about 70 goats. She also grows vegetables, although she doesn’t know how big the land is. Part is for home consumption and part is for the market.
She joined a saving and credit group in 2013. She was attracted by the saving and loan programme; that was her main motivation to become a member of the Small Farmers Agricultural Cooperative of Namtar (affiliated to SFACFL). But she also has interest in the training programmes provided by the district federation. And she heard that some young people are elected for a agricultural technical training in Israel, so she hopes her children will be selected for that as well.
She participated in a vegetable growing training in which she learned about Integrated pest management and organic farming. She is convince that organic vegetables are much healthier for human beings. Her husband joined a goat farming training. As goat raising is already their business, a lot of things were already known to them. The new thing is that they invested in buying improved bucks and they lease for the buck for insemination for a service fee of Rs. 100 (1 USD) per time. This is new income source for the family. Thanks to introducing the improved variety, the price for baby goats has almost doubled as well, for all community members that make use of this buck. So this means a more profitable business. The main farm income comes from goat farming and she estimates an income of 500.000 Rs/ year from the goat business (USD 5.000). She is not keeping any records as it became too complex for her with the growing number of goats!
She has applied for a loan through her group, as she would like to further expand the goat business. Her dream for the future is to expand the farming business, to make the farm better and she hopes that her daughter will continue farming in the future.
