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Home | Industry information | Agriculture
| Agriculture | |
| The
Lao economy is primarily an agricultural one. In 2001, 52.2% of
the GDP originated in agriculture and forestry, and this
sector employed over 80% of the labor force. Agriculture has been a
relatively dynamic sector with increases in cultivated land and
yields for rice and maize as well as increasing production of
cattle, pigs and chickens. Over
the past twenty years paddy yields doubled, making Laos’s rice
fields more productive than those of Thailand.
Laos has three types of agricultural production: low land irrigated, low land non-irrigated, and upland slash and burn agriculture. The government has an explicit goal of increasing the amount of irrigated land and decreasing slash and burn agriculture. Important crops are rice, maize, starchy roots, mung and soy beans, peanuts, tobacco, cotton, sugarcane, coffee and tea. In particular, coffee production has been viewed as an area of growth for the country. The abundant cover of first growth tropical hardwoods also gives Laos a comparative advantage in logging, lumber and forest products. Fresh water fish from the lakes formed behind hydroelectric dams (see below) also has export potential. |
| Information
provided on the DDFI Web site is subject to change without prior
notice. Although an effort is made to present current and accurate
information, the DDFI makes no guarantees concerning the Web site
content or related matters. |
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