Mountain Agriculture

Mountains represents one fifth of the world’s land area, also about one tenth of the world’s population lives there, mountains are not just for spending some nice time and lovely vacation with mother nature. Mountains can produce a large variety of crops that are not available from the plains. There are two main general challenges facing mountain agriculture that includes: Market accessibility, which is not exclusive to selling the products but also sourcing the inputs as well, as they are usually far from the community clusters. Labor availability, mountain agriculture is a family based agriculture as no one will go far to a mountain and get up it to find work, in the same time mountain agriculture faces out-migration to cities and community clusters for high education and better jobs. Mountain agriculture has big economic development potential and its contribution to food security can be easily increased by increasing its efficiency and maintaining its biodiversity, this book is addressing the real potential of mountain farming.