Ministry toughens stance on slash and burn cultivation
Vientiane Times, 4 Mar 2010
The damaging practice of slash and burn cultivation could be exactly that – slashed and burned – under a new plan from the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
The minister, Mr Sitaheng Ratsaphon, has suggested that each of the sectors involved join with local authorities to help stop shifting cultivation this year.
He has also called for the Agriculture and Forestry Extension Service and the Forestry Department to cooperate with provincial agriculture and forestry departments to promote the message to villages and districts, and help them prepare for the change.
The move is intended to protect forests and promote sustainable forest resource development, as well as allocating permanent jobs for farmers without shifting cultivation practices, and improve farmers' living conditions by running agricultural and forestry enterprises on a commercial basis.
The government has already invested significantly in reducing slash and burn cultivation to help ease poverty around the country, according to a report from the ministry.
Central and local officials are also urged to seek suitable ways to implement the strategy, namely by sending staff to villages, grouping small villages into larger administrative units, providing land for people to manage, and creating permanent jobs.
According to local authorities, there were more than 48,000 farming families still practising slash and burn cultivation on about 76,000 hectares of land as of late last year.
The ministry, in cooperation with the National Lands Management Authority, also allocated about 4.2 million hectares of agricultural land, and more than 6.6 million hectares of other land, for people in 7,130 villages to use.
The programme has already been successfully implemented in several villages and districts in Luang Prabang, Saravan, Vientiane, Xieng Khuang and Xayaboury provinces, where slash and burn practices have been eradicated under the supervision of the provincial agriculture and forestry departments and local authorities.
Certificates will be presented to successful villages by the district governor, and successful districts by the provincial governor, while the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry will award successful provinces.
If villages, districts and provinces receive certificates for the eradication of slash and burn cultivation, it is hoped leaders will take a more proactive approach in ensuring the improvement of farming practices.
To encourage funding from private and government organisations or domestic and foreign countries and to provide permanent jobs for farmers and villagers, it is essential that a return to slash and burn cultivation is avoided.
Slash and Burn is also known as swidden agriculture, it's the only kind that can be done succesfully on the steep slopes of upland Laos. Scientists within the ministry of Agriculture have been saying this for more than 10 years.
I think they are just trying to move people off the land they've farmed for hundreds of years so they can steel it and plant rubber.
