Goat marketing study was conducted in eleven districts with the objectives of exploration the existing goat marketing system in western hills of Nepal. The methodology of the study was households survey, Rapid Marketing Appraisal and use of secondary data. Some of the marketing centers are at the village level, catchments, terminal level markets and district headquarters. There are some marketing agents dealing with the goat marketing from village to the municipalities. Goat marketing agents mainly found farmers and middlemen at the village level and catchments markets. In terminal markets mainly wholesalers and middlemen were involved where as in district headquarters and municipalities middlemen, wholesalers and butchers were dealing the goat business. 59.3% respondents believed that middlemen visit in the village for goat marketing. Almost all farmers sell their goats on the basis of estimated price. Major constraints on goat marketing were lack of public goat marketing centres, lack of communications about goat marketing and lack of infrastructure etc in all the domestic markets. In the western hills of Nepal main goat marketing centre was found in Pokhara sub municipality where traders/whole sellers bring their goats to sale from different catchments. Government has the provision of establishing new goat marketing centers in each VDCs and district headquarters.

For socio-economic assessment on wheat production, research was conducted from March to June, 2019 in two major wheat growing districts of Nepal, Kailai and sunsari. The primary information was collected by face to face interview using the pre-tested semi-structured interview schedule, two Key Informant Surveys were also done.In addition, the secondary information were collected from the review of related literatures. The survey areas were selected by consultating with Agriculture Knowledge Centre and agricultural officials of the local government; sample were selected by using simple random sampling. All total, 194 samples were selected for this study; the outliers and incomplete responses were omitted. The descriptive statistics revealed that Nepal 297 (66.16 %) has the highest area coverage in Sunsari while Gautam (36.50%) has the highest coverage in Kailali. Multiple regression model revealed that wheat cultivated area (p= 0.000), adoption of NARC released varieties (p= 0.000), gender of the household head (p= 0.017), age of the household head (p= 0.040), membership of organization (p= 0.094) and number of family members between age group 15 to 59 years (p= 0.085) have significant effect on wheat production. Furthermore, the unpaired t-test showed that the mean productivity of wheat in Kailali (2.99 Mt./ha) is significantly higher than that of Sunsari (2.81t./ha) at 5% level of significance. To increase the wheat productivity, the concerned government agricultural institutions should: assure access to NARC released improved varieties, make policy to consolidate the fragmented land, encourage the economically active population and the household heads towards wheat production by providing the efficient technical and financial support.

Production and marketing of rice seed involves diverse activities and actors in seed value chain. This study aims to investigate practices and pattern of rice seed production and marketing in Nepal employing survey of 270 seed producers and 240 seed dealers and retailers covering most of the Terai and market accessible hills. The finding showed that seed business activities are concentrated on later generation seeds produced by diverse actors but marketed mainly through seed dealers and retailers. The most popular varieties with highest seed sales are Radha-4, Sabitri and US 312 (hybrid) respectively. Seed dealers selling hybrids receive higher benefits due to their higher market margins. The major constraints faced by seed actors are low profit margins in seed marketing of domestic varieties as compared to exotic hybrids. Improving rice seed business requires strengthening seed production and marketing of domestically developed varieties through entrepreneurship development, networking and policy support.

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