Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Northern Laos is a more recent phenomenon (FRC 2005). In response to the recent
growth in market demand, especially from neighbouring China, considerable
potential is believed to exist for the expansion of smallholder rubber. Between 1994
and 1996, smallholders in the Hmong village of Hadyao in Luangnamtha Province
established rubber over 342 ha and these smallholders started tapping their rubber
trees in 2002 (Manivong et al. 2003). By 2004 the total planted area of rubber in
the Province was reported to be 4,581 ha, involving 34 villages and 1,559 house-
holds. The provincial authorities planned to increase the rubber area by 2,000 ha in
the next 5 years (PAFO 2005).
Despite this interest, there is little information available on the potential eco-
nomic returns to smallholder producers, and on the technical and market constraints
they face. Moreover, the impacts of rubber planting on the land-use system and
local economy need investigating. To this end, a study of the economic potential
and impacts of smallholder rubber in Northern Laos was conducted in Luangnamtha
Province in 2005-2006 (Manivong 2007; Manivong and Cramb 2007). This chapter
presents selected results from a case study of Hadyao, the pioneer rubber planting
village in Northern Laos.
Both qualitative and quantitative data were used to understand the transition
from shifting cultivation to rubber production in the case study village. Data were
gathered in July-August 2005 through key informant interviews, group interviews,
direct observation, and a questionnaire survey of 95 farm-households, which
included all the rubber farmers in Hadyao. A pre-tested and modified questionnaire
in the Lao language was used. Interviews were undertaken in the Lao language, in
some cases assisted by local interpreters. The majority of the interviews were in the
respondent's house as this also provided a chance to observe living conditions;
however, farm visits were also carried out.
5.2
Theories of Agricultural Transition in the Uplands
Shifting cultivation has been the dominant land use in the sloping uplands of
Southeast Asia for many centuries. Integral, rotational, long-fallow systems such as
widely practised in the region are considered to be sustainable, provided population
pressure is low (Raintree and Warner 1986; Fox 2000). As Boserup (1965) has
shown, steadily increasing population pressure in subsistence economies can
induce the gradual intensification of such systems from forest-fallow to bush-fallow
to short-fallow to annual or even multi-cropping, with necessary changes in crop
technology along the way. However, the full intensification sequence proposed by
Boserup, with progressively longer cropping periods and shorter fallow periods, is
not feasible in much of the steeply sloping Southeast Asian uplands without caus-
ing serious land degradation and increasing poverty (Cramb 2005). Raintree and
Warner (1986) have elaborated Boserup's theory of intensification, outlining a
variety of agroforestry pathways that open up at different stages, such as enriched
fallows in the forest- and bush-fallow stages and alley cropping in the short-fallow
Search WWH ::
Custom Search