A: Conclusions on how local people understand and deal with food security When asked directly, local people in the four villages surveyed understand food security first and foremost to be expressed in terms of self-sufficiency in rice....
moreA: Conclusions on how local people understand and deal with food security
When asked directly, local people in the four villages surveyed understand food security first and foremost to be expressed in terms of self-sufficiency in rice. Relative wealth of households is primarily expressed in terms of how many month a household can feed itself. On average, the 54 households interviewed produced just enough rice to feed their household. However many households sell rice after harvest to pay debts and need to buy rice later in the season at a higher price. Poor households are not so lucky, they are considered on average to be short of rice for six months per year or more. Rice also represents a large part of the total value of all food consumed in the family: 77% in Oudomxay and 50% in Luang Namtha.
B Conclusions on factors determining food security
The main factor determining food security mentioned by villagers in all four villages was shortage of land and poor quality of soils, reducing food production. Also access to forests for gathering wild foods is rapidly declining. The main causes for shortage of land are seen to be the concentration of many households in one location as a result of village relocation policies, the reduction of fallow periods to less than four years as a result of policies to end shifting cultivation and the natural population growth.
C: Conclusions on strategies of local people to achieve food security
When asked to compare food produced on the farm with other sources of food, on average only 27% of all food is estimated to be derived from the farm. Other sources of food include food collected from the wild (15%), food bought with cash (18%), food borrowed (12%) food exchanged for labor or barter (10%) as well as food received as a gift from relatives (7%) or from the Government and/or aid projects (11%).
D: Conclusions on how local people deal with shocks/ uncertainty
Major rice shortages occurred repeatedly in all four surveyed villages over the past ten years. A major rice shortage struck all four villages in 2008 as a result of poor rainfall. There was another rice shortage in 2005 in Oudomxay. The villages in Luang Namtha have been suffering from poor rice yields every year since 2008. Lack of forest foods and large scale dying of livestock due to pests were also recorded in several villages.
The main coping mechanisms of farmers consist of (a) working as a laborer in exchange for rice (b) selling maize to buy rice and (c) adding tubers and maize to rice when there is not enough rice.
Villagers mentioned their key sources of cash income to be labor. Maize is not available as income source to all families, however. The dependency on labor as the main source of cash to buy food reduces the amount of labor that households can spend on producing their own food.
E: Conclusions on locally proposed solutions to improve food security
Local solutions to improve food security proposed by village women included:
• We should divide the forest into zones for harvesting
• We could plant some wild plants in gardens
• The district should allocate more land from rich to poor families
• ¬We could collect money from all households to buy veterinary medicine as a group
• We should follow district rules on keeping animals away from the road
• We should not eat meat of sick animals
Interestingly, the women did not propose anything on rice production technology. On the other hand, this survey showed a large variety of upland rice varieties being planted by women in the area. It is not clear that there are any better upland rice varieties than the local ones.
The clear message is that they believe access to land with good soils is the main issue to be addressed. Research on rice upland production should focus on working with local varieties, addressing the causes of poor yields such as weeds, poor soils, insect and rat infestations and plant diseases. These issues have already been identified numerous times in the past (see also table 6 above), but so far little research seems to have been directed towards resolving them and little practical new technologies have been identified.
The other conclusion is that there is a clear need to work more on intensified systems of upland livestock raising, confining animals during the rainy season, improved systems for animal feeding and livestock health control.
F: Conclusions on trends, future directions of food security
The main trends in food security seem to be:
• Food production from farms is already low and is likely to drop even further. The share of food produced on the farm remains less than a third of all food consumed. There is little sign of improvement as long as no new successful upland food production techniques are identified or adopted. The increased intensity of cropping with very short fallow cycles, exhaustive cultivation of maize and other commercial crops is likely to lead to a deterioration of soils. If nothing is done, the share of food produced from the farms could drop from 30% to 10-20% over the next ten years.
• Food collected from the wild is rapidly decreasing, making rural households more dependent on their ability to buy food on the market. If nothing is done, the share of food collected from the wild could drop from its present level of 18% to less than 10% over the next ten years.
• Cash cropping has brought cash income enabling households to buy food, but not for everybody. Especially maize has brought a lot of cash income to rural communities, but not to all. The risk is that large groups of households belonging to ethnic minorities in remote communities will remain locked out of this development. The other risk is that intensive cash cropping without rotations will exhaust soils and accelerate erosion.
• Rural households are becoming more and more dependent on their ability to work as laborers to obtain cash to buy food. The benefits are that rural households have more access to food produced elsewhere. Meat and eggs are among the most often bought products. That means that people who can afford it are consuming more proteins in their diet. It also implies a big risk for two reasons. The first is that there are not enough employment opportunities for all, so poor households are at risk of not being able to earn enough cash income to buy the food they need. Secondly, the more time a poor household spends on working on somebody else’s field, the less time they have to produce their own food.
• Livestock raising is reaching crisis levels, many animals are dying, there is not enough land to graze animals, there are no good systems for reducing exposure of animals to diseases, there are no good systems for improved feeding of livestock and there are negative impacts of commercial cropping on livestock (e.g. poisoning by chemicals). If nothing is done, livestock is likely to become less important as a source of food and as a source of income. At the same time, the economic potential for livestock raising in the uplands is very promising, if given appropriate support.
• Rural households experience conflicts with companies over land use and shocks in their food security. They lack awareness, ability and organizational power to deal with these threats effectively. If nothing is done to improve the organizational capacity of rural communities, the risk is that they will be left out of economic development opportunities, they will be left with no access to land, they risk becoming marginalized and dependent on Government support forever.
• Food aid to schoolchildren is being scaled back. Previously successful schemes providing rice, maize, sugar and tinned fish to school children were making a real impact. Many of these schemes are now being scaled back. With the negative trends in availability of various food sources, the risk is that the nutrition status of school children could get worse again.
