The Adoption of Smallholder Rubber Production by Shifting Cultivators in Northern Laos: A Village Case Study - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 120

The results suggest that the area of rice cultivated per household was primarily deter-
mined by other factors. Given that most households were clustered around the mean
of 1.0ha and that most households were less than 100 percent self-sufficient, it is
likely that there was an overall shortage of rice land and individual households were
constrained by the land allocation system. Hence the increase in rubber planting was
reducing the total area cultivated, as farmers reported, but this was being spread
across all households rather than being an individual trade-off. That rice land was
being sought outside the village lends support to this argument.
5.6 RubberCultivation
5.6.1 PlantingRubber
As described above, rubber was introduced to Hadyao in 1994 by Hmong migrants
from China and was planted by individual smallholders (Photo. 5.1). From the first
planting in 1994 until 2005 around 253,300 rubber trees have been planted on an area
of 562 ha. This represents 12 percent of village land and 33 percent of agricultural
land. All the rubber has been planted within the 1,700 ha of village agricultural land
shown in Table 5.1. About 120,000 mature trees on an area of 266 ha are currently
being tapped and about 133,300 immature trees (296 ha) have been recently planted
and are expected to commence tapping in 2011 or 2012. In the immediate future the
village leaders have no plan to expand the area of rubber, just to replant dead trees,
expressing concern that villagers will not be able to take care of many more trees.
All the surveyed households had planted rubber. On average, one household had
planted 2.3 plots of rubber. About 88 percent of households had from one to three
rubber plots. About 71 percent of households planted rubber in the first phase
(1994-1996), while 94 percent planted in the second phase (2003-2005). Around
76 percent had their rubber plots only inside the village territory while 24 percent
had one or more rubber plots outside the village. Almost all households that planted
rubber in the first phase planted inside the village, but some that planted in the sec-
ond phase planted in other village areas. Moreover, almost all of the land planted
with rubber in the first phase was located near the village settlement, while many
of households that planted in the second phase had their rubber plots far from the
village centre, about one to two hours' walking distance. Almost all households (93
percent) had planted rubber exclusively on upland plots used for shifting cultiva-
tion. Five of the seven households that had planted rubber on lowland plots had
planted in the second phase. These observations again highlight the emerging short-
age of land for both rice and rubber, particularly well-located land for rubber.
The total number of rubber trees planted averaged 1,930 trees per household.
Most households (65 percent) had planted between 500 and 2,500 trees. On average
426 trees had died, ranging from 0 to 2,300 trees, mostly due to the 1999 frost but
some because of poor seedlings, poor planting technique, poor maintenance, and
root diseases. Before rubber was tapped, farmers were not sure that they would get