Agricultue and Gender: The Role of Women In Ensuring Food Security In Laos

The following article that I assisted to write appears in the January-March 2010 Peace Office Newsletter on Food Security in the Early 21st Century. The newsletter can be downloaded at http://www.mcc.org/whatwedo/peace/pon

Agriculture and Gender: the Role of Women in Ensuring Food Security

Women around the world play a significant role in securing food for their families and communities in Laos. Sixty kilometers (37 miles) from Vientiane City, the capital of Lao PDR, women in the rural Sang Thong District work diligently to secure adequate food for their families, as illustrated by the stories of the three women in this article.

Kong Sy plays a major role in supporting her family’s access to food. In 2002, she and her family moved to the newly-developed Houay Kham Village in order to acquire land from the government. Since then they have worked hard to maximize the food production from their small piece of land. Access to a nearby government-built reservoir provides a source of water year round for their frog and fish ponds, and irrigation of their integrated garden.

Several years ago Kong Sy’s husband paid for a course on breeding and raising frogs. After learning from her husband the necessary skills, she now has primary responsibility for the daily maintenance of the frog ponds, and also the joy of selling the frogs to local villagers eager to buy the delicious-tasting frogs. With a high demand for her frogs, Kong Sy has plans to expand the number of concrete frog ponds as funds become available. The frogs also provide a vital food source for her family and it is Kong Sy’s role to choose just the right ones for consumption. When she is not busy with breeding and caring for the frogs, she attends to her integrated garden.

In 2006 Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) provided fruit tree seedlings for the integrated garden. Under the attentive care of Kong Sy the garden has matured to produce a wide variety of fruits and vegetables for the family, plus enough to sell and give away to family and friends. Others are keen to benefit from the productivity of the garden, and Kong Sy is just as keen to share her seedlings with others so they might benefit also.

For Kong Sy there is no time for vacation. She works every day, all day. A grandmother of three and mother of seven, it continues to be her role to also prepare daily meals for the family and care for the grandchildren while her adult children labor in the dry rice fields.

In the same village, 47-year-old Med labors in her vegetable garden. Med also arrived in 2002 in Houay Kham Village with her husband and family, after the government cleared land to develop a village closer to infrastructure services. On her small plot of land, measuring about 800 square meters, she grows local greens year round. Frequent flooding in the low areas and the need for plastic-covered bamboo shelters during the rainy season create challenges for rainy season vegetable growing. But the higher earnings from her vegetables inspire her to persevere with growing vegetables year round. As one of only two vegetable producers in her village, the demand for her produce is high. She has sometimes tried to travel to other villages to sell her produce, but never gets beyond her own before everything is sold. The vegetables Med does not sell are consumed by the family or shared with relatives. Gradually she is trying to improve her work conditions and the yield.

In Khouy Village in the same district, 45-year-old Boun lives with her 18-year-old son, husband and 70-year-old mother. She has lived in Khouy Village all her life. Growing rice is the main activity for her family, just as for almost all the families in this village. Having inherited rice paddy land from her parents and with many years of experience, she skillfully produces rice for her family to consume and sell. She is grateful she has rice paddy land, because it is less labor-intensive to grow rice on paddy land than to grow dry-land rice. Boun participates in every step of the rice production from growing and transplanting the seedlings, to maintaining the rice fields throughout the growing season, to harvesting the crop, and then selling the rice. Since her paddy land is not irrigated she depends totally on the June to September rains for a sufficient crop to feed her family for another year.

Last year, she produced 5.7 tons from her 1.6 hectares (4 acres) and sold approximately two-thirds of her yield, earning $800. Along with the income the family earned from selling ducks, chickens and cattle, Boun carefully calculates how much can be spent for daily family expenditures and how much is needed to start next year’s rice crop and continue to raise animals. With the wisdom and skills she has gained, and with three healthy laborers in the family, she dreams of opening more paddy land and raising fish in the nearby pond to increase her ability to provide for her family.

“Women play a very important role in securing food for their families in rural Lao PDR,” observes MCC Agriculture Officer Phoungeun Xaypaseuth who has worked in the Sang Thong District for almost four years. “Generally it is the responsibility of the women to feed their families, which requires searching for food and sometimes selling rice, bamboo products they have made or other items they have collected from the forest, in order to purchase the required food supplies for their family. In many cases, it is also the role of women to manage the family finances and assess what will be saved for future development and what is needed for daily living.”

These three women -- Kong Sy, Med and Boun -- work in solidarity with women around the world to ensure there will be food to feed their families and communities both today and tomorrow.