From Nebraska to New York, the Americans serve a sorry version of tea labelled chai latte—basically spiced up milk and water with a hint of tea. They really don’t do chiya well. Perhaps because they grow so little of it, with only 40 hectares spared for it in the whole of mainland US. Contrast this puny acreage for tea with humongous areas set aside for corn and soybean.

The US is the largest corn producer in the world, churning out nearly 400 million metric tons last year. It is also a soybean heavyweight, growing some 114 million tons of the stuff a year. The success of these two products is a testament to the American ingenuity in agricultural innovation and mechanisation.

On a recent hot August day, I was on the soybean farm of Kyle Durham in the US state of Missouri. A sixth generation farmer, Durham lives on the farm with his wife Courney and their two sons. Founded by Durham’s grandfather after the Second World War, his farm, which at this time of year was covered in green Soybean plants, stretches over 1,000 hectares.

I am curious. “How many people do you employ in the planting and harvesting of soybeans?” I ask the middle-aged soy farmer with a salt and pepper goatee.

“I do it all myself,” he says.

I can hardly believe my ears. Back in Nepal, I start thinking, it would take at least 20 farm hands to work a field of a similar size.

Durham then takes us to his sizable shed to show some of his farm equipment. The soy harvester is as big as a mini-house, capable, we are told, of planting the whole farm in around 10-15 days.

“How much does this thing cost?” I ask.

“Around 600,000 dollars,” he replies.

The planter is of a similar size. Everything here is on an industrial scale.

The US is better known as a technological goliath, birthing such world-beating tech giants as Apple and Google. Lesser known are its agriculture exploits. Yet even in agriculture, it is a model of efficiency and endless experimentation.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, the total farm output in the country tripled between 1948 and 2021, even as total input use declined. The American farmers and their representative bodies work closely with local research universities to boost yield and discover more weather and pest resistant crop varieties.

Even at the risk of comparing chalk and cheese, it is worth nothing that Nepal’s productivity is dismal—even by regional standards. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, between 1960 and 2017, the annual growth rate of rice yield in Nepal was 1.14 percent—substantially less than the corresponding figures for India (2.5 percent), Bangladesh (three percent) and China (4.2 percent). In this time, the global average was 4.5 percent.

No wonder Nepal is these days importing even the cereals that it once exported in abundance.

Nepal used to export more food than it imported until the early 1980s. But it became a net importer from the early 1980s, and such imports really took wings after 2008.

The country is still an agriculture-based economy, the sector engaging over 60 percent of its people. Yet it is also clearly not a government priority. Forget fancy equipment. Our farmers don’t even get timely fertilisers, as a result of which they are having to cut down on paddy acreage.

Nepal’s agricultural woes will only get worse with climate change. Indications are that changes in precipitation patterns will affect rainfed agriculture, resulting in annual yield variability and higher production risks.

Yet our government continues in its own merry, do-little way, which is why, even as the risks multiply, the implementation of vital agriculture policies remains dismal.

Take the National Agricultural Policy 2004, which came to support the Agricultural Perspective Plan, a cross-sectional strategy to make Nepal self-sufficient in food. The policy was brought to boost agriculture-led rural development. To take just one example of its poor implementation, the policy discourages transformation of fertile land for non-agricultural uses, and adoption of more scientific land use.

Yet after all these years the conversion of agricultural into non-agricultural land continues unabated. Our politicians and lawmakers didn’t see any political benefit in the policy’s implementation, it seems.

Even the champions of the proletariat in Nepal have turned into uber-bourgeois, and there is now no political party that understands farmers. This is self-defeating. As things stand, productive agriculture is Nepal’s best shot at prosperity. But without state support, little will come out of it.

The US heavily subsidises its crops and dairy products, partly as a result of the outsized political clout of American farmers. Even in India, there are large subsidies for fertilisers, as well as generous irrigation and crop insurance—not to mention a legion of hidden subsidies. By comparison, in Nepal, things like minimum support prices and input subsidies are as good as non-existent.

When other countries, big and small, are offering substantial subsidies to their farmers, why have we failed to protect and promote our own farmers? Why is there such a mismatch between our status as an agricultural country and the reality on the ground?

This is no trivial issue. Food insecurity is emerging as a big global challenge. Even Nepal is often affected by India’s sudden bans on export of daily commodities like sugar and grains. Earlier this year, rice prices surged in Nepal after India banned the export of non-basmati white rice. Nepalis, as a result, are having to set aside larger and larger sums from their fixed incomes just to feed themselves. Pretty much the same thing happens with many of the fruits and vegetables.

There is no reason Nepali agriculture should be struggling so badly despite the country’s obvious challenges: Besides the ones mentioned above, land fragmentation, difficult terrains, high exodus of youths, and the absence of the economies of scale available to the likes of the US and India.

Back home in Nepal, as I finally get to sip on some locally-grown, delectably light white tea, I cannot help but think: In a country where under 2 percent of its people are into agriculture, the American farmers are rich and wield enormous political power. In sharp contrast, in Nepal, where a solid majority of people still rely directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihood, the Nepali farmers are poor, and they now have next to no political power that they can use to change their lot.