Root crops for people and pigs: Food security and income generation to support transition from upland rice cropping in northern Laos

Rice is produced almost exclusively in fallow rotation (“shifting cultivation”) systems, but increasing population and land use restrictions are causing decreasing fallow periods, decreasing yields (from weed pressure, declining soil fertility), with a result in decreasing returns to labour, i.e. a poverty trap. The Lao government policy aims to eradicate shifting cultivation by 2010 and to develop permanent cropping on fixed fields and diversified production systems