A diagnostic survey of shifting cultivation in northern Laos: targeting research to improve sustainability and productivity

Abstract

About 25% of Laos' four million people practise shifting cultivation (mainly of rice) on a third of the country's cropped area. Official policy is to eliminate shifting cultivation by the year 2000. Diagnostic surveys of shifting cultivation were conducted in Luang Prabang and Oudomsay Provinces in northern Laos to understand the practice from a farmer's perspective, to observe fields, and to identify and give priority to problems and research to address problems. Weeds, low and possibly declining soil fertility, intensification of the cropping cycle, rats (plus birds, wild pigs), and insects lowered rice yields or reduced system sustainability. The forest ecosystem has been degraded by logging, burning, and rice monocropping; and potentials for environmental rehabilitation through natural succession are minimal. Farmers cannot adopt high labor and cash cost innovations; and improved fallow is needed as an intermediate step prior to crop diversification, adoption ofagroforestry technologies, and sedentary agriculture.

Status and conservation of the giant muntjac Megamuntiacus vuquangensis, and notes on other muntjac species in Laos

“…Shifting cultivation in Laos is estimated to claim 100,000 ha of primary forest and 300,000 ha of secondary forest a year (Lao government estimate, quoted by Fujisaka, 1991). The Hmong, an ethnic group, which has been moving into central Laos (including into the Naki-Nam Theun NBCA area) from the north, is of particular concern.…”

Stable Forest Cover under Increasing Populations of Swidden Cultivators in Central Laos: the Roles of Intrinsic Culture and Extrinsic Wildlife Trade

“…The Government of Lao PDR (GoL), encouraged by some international donors, has routinely denounced swidden as the primary threat to the country's forests. Consequently, the GoL's foremost national land-use policy in the 1990s was to eliminate swidden cultivation by the year 2000 (Fujisaka 1991). When this proved too ambitious, the GoL aimed to "stabilize" swidden by the year 2010 (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) 2003).…”

A Texture-Based Land Cover Classification for the Delineation of a Shifting Cultivation Landscape in the Lao PDR Using Landscape Metrics

“…In the western part, around Luang Prabang, the prevailing land use categories are permanent agriculture and rotational agriculture on three fixed plots (a production system introduced in the 1990s by the Government of Laos in an effort to reduce poverty and stabilize shifting cultivation) [27,28]. Travelling eastwards, a degraded mountain ridge is encountered, showing mainly imperata grassland with patches of bare land or secondary forest [29]. Behind that mountain ridge, traditional shifting cultivation with fallow lengths of more than three years prevails [30].…”