Authorities in Attapeu province have awarded concessions to three Lao companies, enabling them to grow durian on hundreds of hectares of land as part of the government’s broader effort to boost the cultivation of fruit on a commercial basis.
Australia-based Costa Group has launched a new blueberry farming project on the Bolaven Plateau in Laos, starting with 17 hectares of crops at Paksong.
HAGL, a major Vietnamese agriculture firm, has doubled its durian farming area to 2,000 hectares and expanded its banana farming area by 40% to 7,000 hectares in the past two years.
The country’s improved railway connectivity facilitates fruit exports to China but has also sparked a boom in foreign-owned banana and durian farms, leading to deforestation.
One Chinese company that has joined Laos' durian rush is Jiarun, an infrastructure builder that has vowed to establish the world's largest durian plantation in Attapeu, a remote province in southern Laos, on 5,000 ha it has secured on a 50-year lease from the Laotian government.
China's Asia Tobacco Industry Group says it will will build a crop oil processing plant, a cattle farm, a plant to produce feed for cattle and various aquatic species, and a fertiliser processing plant, as well as supporting farmers to cultivate bananas and sugarcane.
Donor-designed forest carbon projects and private sector companies like Burapha Agro-Forestry are facing insurmountable challenges from an age-old problem: land tenure insecurity.
A 20% year-over-year increase of agricultural exports from Laos in 2023 was largely on the back of Chinese plantations, according to trade officials, meaning that the country will reap few of the profits.
With over 48,000 ha of coffee cultivation potential in the plateau area, Asia Investment Development and Construction Sole Co and Petroleum Authority of Thailand envision generating substantial carbon credits.
The Petroleum Authority of Thailand, owner of the Café Amazon chain, expects the partnership will eventually establish a 48,000 hectare coffee plantation on the Bolaven Plateau, which will open up opportunities for the sale of carbon credits.
As soon as the rice is harvested, the corn is seeded; three months later it’s watermelons then bananas, cash crops grown year round on farms in Laos rented by Chinese investors to feed China’s insatiable appetite for fresh produce.
Large-scale land acquisitions repeatedly fall short of their acclaimed socioeconomic benefits. In Laos, the government has started to question its own “Turning Land into Capital” policy, and reviews land acquisitions or concessions with regard to their socioeconomic impacts.
