Nepal - Vegetable Crops Survey 2009-2010

The sampling frame for Vegetable Crops Survey 2009-10 is the combination of the area under vegetable crops (including potato) at district level and number of households at ward level. The information on the area under vegetable crops was available from Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives for the year 2008-09 and household information was made use of latest National Population Census of Nepal 2001.

The estimates were desired for 11 domains, 5 development regions, 3 agro-ecological belts and national level. The area under vegetable crops was aggregated at domain level to select the districts (high productive district) prominent to vegetable farming.
The wards were classified into two categories: wards with commercial vegetable farming and wards with non-commercial vegetable farming. This information was not readily available; however, it was closely related to the vegetable pocket areas defined by District Agriculture Development Offices (DADO). With the help of Vegetable Development Directorate, Branch Statistical Offices (BSO) and survey team of Agriculture Statistics Section under CBS, the VDC/ municipalities were classified as commercial and non-commercial areas for vegetable farming. The information (classification) was derived at ward level with the assumption that all the wards within VDC/Municipality were uniformly commercial and non-commercial in accordance to the VDC/Municipality they belong.

The sampling design adopted in Vegetable Crops Survey 2009-10 was three-stage stratified cluster sampling. The three stages of the sample selection were:
First stage: districts
Second stage: wards
Third stage: vegetable holdings (households farming vegetable crops)

First stage of selection

In the first stage, 34 districts were selected as primary sampling unit (PSU) from the country. The number of districts to be selected from 11 domains (also considered as strata) was allocated proportionately based on the area under vegetable crops in each domain. The districts were selected from each domain with probability proportional to size (PPS) where the measure of size was the area under vegetable crops in each district.

Second stage of selection

From each district selected in the first stage, 10 wards (clusters) were selected as secondary sampling unit (SSU). Two explicit strata were made within a district with wards of commercial vegetable farming and wards of non-commercial vegetable farming. Number of wards to each stratum was allocated proportionately. The wards were sorted in each stratum by village development committee (VDC) and municipality and their order (from 1 to 9 in VDC and 1 to largest in municipality) as an implicit stratification. The wards were selected with PPS from each stratum where the measure of size was the number of households in each ward.

Third stage of selection

From each ward selected in the second stage, an exhaustive listing of households with vegetable farming (vegetable holding) was prepared. The vegetable holdings were sorted implicitly based on the four categories of area under vegetable crops. Eventually, a systematic sampling was employed to select 15 (20 in the case of under-representative domains) vegetable holdings as ultimate sampling unit (USU).

All the operational holdings where vegetable crops were grown at least in 2 Aana (0.00636 hectares) in Mountains and Hills or 4 Dhur (0.00677 hectares) in Tarai of land were termed as vegetable holding. The implicit stratification was made with the following four criteria of land area where vegetable crops were grown:

a. At least 2 Aana/4 Dhur or more and less than 8 Aana/10 Dhur;
b. 8 Aana/10 Dhur or more and less than 1 Ropani/1 Kaththa;
c. 1 Ropani/1 Kaththa or more and less than 5 Ropani/5 Kaththa; and
d. More than 5 Ropani/5 Kaththa.


The response rate of the survey was 100 percent.


The weights were calculated as the inverse of the probability of selection. For this survey, household weights and the weights for vegetable holdings were calculated. The weight variable for vegetable holdings is available in all VCS data files as VEG_WEIGHT while the household weight variable is available in the vegetable_rec_test data file as HH_WEIGHT. The derivation of the weights are discussed in detail in Annex II of the VCS 2009 Statistical Report.