Nepal, Oct. 14 -- With recurrent floods and landslides across Nepal, farmers watch the same rivers that irrigate their fields wash away their harvests during the monsoon occasionally. Floods of varying scale and severity strike the valleys and plains, while the hills and mountains endure landslides of different magnitudes. In the aftermath of such events, attention typically centres on the dead, the injured, and the loss of physical assets. Far less is said about those who lose their farmland.

While state-led damage assessments, including the Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA) report on the recent Bhotekoshi disaster, record agricultural losses primarily as production losses, they do so without clarifying what happened to the land ...