Lao People's Democratic Republic

Three quarters of households are engaged in agriculture. Whether in irrigated paddies in the valleys, or in rain-fed upland fields, rice is cultivated by 90 percent of farmers and constitutes the main staple. Only one third of farmers grow additional crops. Coupled with the declining availability of forest foods due to deforestation and unsustainable gathering methods, this means that the diets of vulnerable communities are poorly diversified.  

Together with suboptimal child feeding practices – including limited breastfeeding – low education levels and difficult access to basic health services, this contributes to malnutrition remaining a serious challenge.

Vulnerability to climate change – and particularly drought, floods and typhoons – is also a driver of food insecurity, which affects 14 percent of the rural population, with peaks of 25 percent in remote upland areas. Other factors include declining land availability, volatile prices, low agricultural productivity, difficult access to markets and lack of diversified livelihood options.

Having established a presence in Lao PDR in 1975, the World Food Programme (WFP) is supporting the Lao Government’s vision of “a prosperous country, with a healthy population, free from food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty”.

In its approach, WFP is gradually shifting from the delivery of services to building the capacity of both institutions and communities to address the challenges of food insecurity and malnutrition.

As the population is scattered over vast areas where access can be difficult, strengthening the self-reliance of communities for solving their own food security problems is central to WFP’s strategy. By promoting changes in people’s behaviour – such as introducing complementary, nutritious crops; diversifying diets; improving infant and young child feeding practices; and enhancing communities’ ownership of initiatives like school feeding – WFP aims to improve the nutritional status of vulnerable people throughout their life cycle, as well as their resilience to seasonal and long-term shocks and stresses.