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Abstract
Income generating activities play a vital role to improve the livelihood of rural people in developing
countries. International donor agencies and national policy makers would like to see subsistence
farming transformed into commercial agriculture to enhance the well beings of people in
developing countries. In Nepal for the last two decades or so, farmers are incorporating income
generating activities in subsistent farming systems. Most popular income generating activities
include mushroom cultivation, sericulture, apiculture, and fish culture. Our objective in this paper
is to use a multinomial logit model to determine the factors affecting the choice of income
generating activities by Nepalese farmers. Some of the important explanatory variables used in this
model are availability of water, inputs (such as seeds and disinfectants), technology, and market
accessibility. We use 2012 census data available from the Agricultural Census of Nepal to conduct
this analysis. Preliminary results indicated that availability of inputs and accessibility to markets
are the major determinants in selecting income generation activities. The outcome of this study may
help to promote ideal income generating activities for the benefit of rural farmers in Nepal or other
developing countries.