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Balancing cash and food: The impacts of agrarian change on rural land use and wellbeing in Northern Laos
This study investigates the effects of improved market accessibility on agricultural land use and basic wellbeing, defined by income and rice sufficiency, in Xayaburi province, Lao PDR through a meso-scale and actor-oriented approach with data collection at both district and household level. It also...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312269/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30596672 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209166 |
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author | Thanichanon, Puwadej Schmidt-Vogt, Dietrich Epprecht, Michael Heinimann, Andreas Wiesmann, Urs |
author_facet | Thanichanon, Puwadej Schmidt-Vogt, Dietrich Epprecht, Michael Heinimann, Andreas Wiesmann, Urs |
author_sort | Thanichanon, Puwadej |
collection | PubMed |
description | This study investigates the effects of improved market accessibility on agricultural land use and basic wellbeing, defined by income and rice sufficiency, in Xayaburi province, Lao PDR through a meso-scale and actor-oriented approach with data collection at both district and household level. It also investigates farmers’ decision-making as it relates to regional markets. Increasing market accessibility in rural areas facilitates cash crop trade leading to agrarian change from subsistence to commercial agricultural systems. This transformation raises concerns about food security and vulnerability to market uncertainties as farmers are likely to grow cash crops intensively and in place of food crops, leading to lower food production. Meanwhile incomes from cash crop trade are highly vulnerable to market uncertainties. We found that farmers in the south of Xayaburi, where market accessibility is higher than in the north, primarily grow cash crops and do not suffer from rice insufficiency while farmers in the north, where market accessibility is lower, rely more on subsistence agriculture and have a lower level of basic wellbeing. The major factors of better basic wellbeing in the south include: (1) better market accessibility which can mitigate the risks of market uncertainty and create enough income to compensate for and overcome losses in rice production, (2) availability of more arable land due to a larger amount of level terrain which allows farmers to expand cash crop cultivation and continue growing rice at the same time, and (3) farmer strategy to keep a part of their land for growing rice to meet their minimum consumption needs and prevent the risks of rice insufficiency. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6312269 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-63122692019-01-08 Balancing cash and food: The impacts of agrarian change on rural land use and wellbeing in Northern Laos Thanichanon, Puwadej Schmidt-Vogt, Dietrich Epprecht, Michael Heinimann, Andreas Wiesmann, Urs PLoS One Research Article This study investigates the effects of improved market accessibility on agricultural land use and basic wellbeing, defined by income and rice sufficiency, in Xayaburi province, Lao PDR through a meso-scale and actor-oriented approach with data collection at both district and household level. It also investigates farmers’ decision-making as it relates to regional markets. Increasing market accessibility in rural areas facilitates cash crop trade leading to agrarian change from subsistence to commercial agricultural systems. This transformation raises concerns about food security and vulnerability to market uncertainties as farmers are likely to grow cash crops intensively and in place of food crops, leading to lower food production. Meanwhile incomes from cash crop trade are highly vulnerable to market uncertainties. We found that farmers in the south of Xayaburi, where market accessibility is higher than in the north, primarily grow cash crops and do not suffer from rice insufficiency while farmers in the north, where market accessibility is lower, rely more on subsistence agriculture and have a lower level of basic wellbeing. The major factors of better basic wellbeing in the south include: (1) better market accessibility which can mitigate the risks of market uncertainty and create enough income to compensate for and overcome losses in rice production, (2) availability of more arable land due to a larger amount of level terrain which allows farmers to expand cash crop cultivation and continue growing rice at the same time, and (3) farmer strategy to keep a part of their land for growing rice to meet their minimum consumption needs and prevent the risks of rice insufficiency. Public Library of Science 2018-12-31 /pmc/articles/PMC6312269/ /pubmed/30596672 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209166 Text en © 2018 Thanichanon et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Thanichanon, Puwadej Schmidt-Vogt, Dietrich Epprecht, Michael Heinimann, Andreas Wiesmann, Urs Balancing cash and food: The impacts of agrarian change on rural land use and wellbeing in Northern Laos |
title | Balancing cash and food: The impacts of agrarian change on rural land use and wellbeing in Northern Laos |
title_full | Balancing cash and food: The impacts of agrarian change on rural land use and wellbeing in Northern Laos |
title_fullStr | Balancing cash and food: The impacts of agrarian change on rural land use and wellbeing in Northern Laos |
title_full_unstemmed | Balancing cash and food: The impacts of agrarian change on rural land use and wellbeing in Northern Laos |
title_short | Balancing cash and food: The impacts of agrarian change on rural land use and wellbeing in Northern Laos |
title_sort | balancing cash and food: the impacts of agrarian change on rural land use and wellbeing in northern laos |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312269/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30596672 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209166 |
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