Rice and Remittances: Crop Intensification Versus Labour Migration in Southern Laos

Despite being a low-income, agriculture-based country with a subsistence orientation, Laos is in the early stages of a major economic transformation whereby rural households have been experiencing rapid change in their farming and livelihood systems. Some households have begun to engage in semi-commercial farming while others have adopted labour-oriented or migration-oriented livelihood strategies. This paper explores how rural households in six villages in the lowlands of Champasak Province in southern Laos make a living. These villages vary in their access to irrigation and to markets. Nevertheless, in all villages, long-term migration of younger household members to neighbouring Thailand has come to play a large role in household livelihood strategies. In some cases this is necessary to meet the household’s consumption requirements; in most, it is part of a diversified strategy in which rice farming still plays a significant role, though still largely for subsistence. The paper examines some of the issues involved in attempting to promote intensive, market-oriented rice farming in a context of an emerging on-farm labour shortage combined with an increasing flow of remittances from migrant family members.