Environmentally sustainable farming practices help farmers in Laos not only increase their incomes but also breed healthier crops for consumers and their families.
Khamphou Phanthaboun who farms at Nonetae Village, in the Xaythany district 20 Km south from Vientiane, would heavily rely on pesticides to grow vegetables in the mid 1990s, and even as such, he was struggling to earn a living from his vegetable farm. He was able to produce just one kind of vegetable and had to rely on a middleman who would buy his yields at low prices.
Without any higher education, raising his five children was not an easy task. Like the majority of Lao people, Khamphou and his wife depend mainly on agriculture to survive.
In 1998, Khamphou joined a farmer field school in his community. For the first time, he learned the ins and outs of how to grow healthy crops: “Since I joined the programme, I knew how to rotate crops. I learned about the pests’ lifecycle and how to identify them. I learned new skills and techniques to manage them while avoiding the use of chemicals,” says Khamphou.
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