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

Reference Type Journal Article
Year of Publication
1991
Contributors Author: S. Fujisaka
Journal
Agroforestry Systems
Volume
13
Issue
2
Pagination
95-109
Date Published
02/1991
Language
English
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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 of agroforestry technologies, and sedentary agriculture. (author)
URL
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00140235
DOI
10.1007/BF00140235
Journal Abbreviation
Agroforest Syst
ISSN
0167-4366; 1572-9680
Short Title
A diagnostic survey of shifting cultivation in northern Laos