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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Laos
Index
Rice is the main crop grown during the rainy season,
and under
usual conditions, rainfall is adequate for rice
production.
However, if rain ceases to fall for several weeks to a
month at a
critical time in the rice growing cycle, yields will be
significantly affected. Upland rice varieties, although
adapted to
a lower moisture requirement, are also affected by
intermittent
rains because farmers have no means of storing water in
their
fields.
Rice accounted for over 80 percent of agricultural land
and
between 73 percent and 84 percent of total agricultural
output of
major crops throughout the 1980s, except in 1988 and into
the early
1990s (see
table 4, Appendix). Rice paddies also yield
fish in
irrigation ditches in na (lowland rice fields).
Production
of rice more than doubled between 1974 and 1986, from
fewer than
700,000 tons to 1.4 million tons; however, drought in 1987
and 1988
cut annual yields by nearly one-third, to about 1 million
tons,
forcing the government to rely on food aid for its
domestic
requirements. In 1988 and 1989, some 140,000 tons of rice
were
donated or sold to Laos. With improved weather and the
gradual
decollectivization of agriculture--an important measure
under the
New Economic Mechanism--rice production surged by 40
percent in
1989. The increase in production reflected the importance
of the
agricultural sector to the economy and was largely
responsible for
the economic recovery following the droughts. In 1990
production
continued to increase, although at a much slower rate, and
the
point of self-sufficiency in rice was reached: a record
1.5 million
tons. Sufficiency at a national level, however, masks
considerable
regional differences. The southern Mekong provinces of
Khammouan,
Savannakhét, and Champasak regularly produce surpluses, as
do
Vientiane and Oudômxai provinces, but an inadequate
transportation
system often makes it easier for provinces with shortages
to
purchase rice from Thailand or Vietnam than to purchase it
from
other provinces.
According to some sources, the percentage of the labor
force
engaged in rice production declined gradually, by over 30
percent
between 1986 and 1991, a trend encouraged by the
government because
it tended to increase export-oriented production. However,
some
feared this trend would threaten sustained
self-sufficiency in
food, another key goal of the government. Sustained selfsufficiency however, more likely depends on a continued
increase in
the use of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and
improved
strains of rice, and on the implementation of extension
and
research services rather than on the actual number of
workers
involved in planting.
The overall increase in rice production throughout the
1980s
was the result of higher productivity per hectare, rather
than of
an increase in the land area planted in rice; in fact, the
area
planted in rice decreased during the 1980s, from 732,000
hectares
in 1980 to 657,000 hectares in 1990. Because farmers make
little
use of fertilizers or irrigation, however, most land still
yielded
only one annual crop in the early 1990s, despite
government efforts
to foster the use of double-crop rice.
Data as of July 1994
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