IRRI's achievements & successes

Genuinely Lao

The story of the project that revolutionized rice production in Laos (pdf version)

Editor's note: This story recently won third place in a competition sponsored by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) for success stories in countries in its East Asia Division.

In 1990, Laos needed more food. The rice industry in particular and agriculture in general was ready for change. It had been a long time since the country had produced enough rice — from which the average Lao person receives around two-thirds of his or her calories — to feed everybody. Something needed to happen, and soon.

Change did arrive that year, along with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The Lao-IRRI Rice Research and Training Project aimed to completely re-vitalize the Lao rice industry. The next 15 years would see an enormous surge in Laos's research and training capacity and would begin the long, hard journey to self-sufficiency in rice.

John Schiller, the IRRI scientist who led the project from its start until 2001, recalls the early days.

"When the project began," he explains, "there was almost no research aimed at developing technologies for improving rice production, almost no commercial fertilizer use, and limited rice research expertise."

IRRI agronomist Bruce Linquist, who arrived in Laos in 1997 and has led the project since 2004, adds that the country's problems were compounded by a dearth of international aid before the project began: "We were the only ones doing rice research and we basically started from scratch," he says.

Why did the Lao-IRRI Project succeed in the face of such adverse conditions? For a start, the timing was good and, as the project began, several key factors converged.

"The government introduced favorable agricultural policies," explains Dr Ty Phommasack, the current Vice Minister fosr Agriculture and Forestry. "At the same time, IRRI arrived with technologies and know-how and SDC came in with long-term financial support. The government's support has been a big factor from the very start, and the impact the project has had on the Lao rice industry really is unprecedented."

Dr Schiller adds that the Minister for Agriculture and Forestry, Dr Siene Saphangthong, who spent time at IRRI as a research scholar, strongly supported the project in its early stages, when he was Vice Minister. "As a result," he says, "the project's implementation was relatively smooth."

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