Agricultural mechanization in rural area of Lao PDR: A case study of farm tractorization

In an attempt to emphasize the impact of farm tractorization in rural area, the research has been carried out in PhaOudom, recognized as one of the poorest districts in Laos. This paper is aimed at providing a comparative analysis among tractor-using farmers, namely, tractor-owning farmers and non-tractor-owning farmers, and negative effect of tractorization by custom hire on the food security. The analysis uses 2007 cross-sectional survey data on 88 randomly selected rice farming households. Descriptive and variance analyses show that tractor-owning farmers are better in terms of mechanization level, rice and livestock production (larger area and larger herd of animals). The result from regression analysis suggests that tractor-owning farmers have increasing returns to scale while non-tractor-owning farmers have constant returns to scale. Moreover, tractor-owning farmers obtain extra paddy from hiring out their tractor-about 1300 kg in 2007. As a result, they have more annual farm income than non-tractor-owning farmers. About 90% of non-tractor-owning farmers acquired the use of tractor for tillage operation by custom hire, and about 70% of them paid by paddy due to lack of cash. Approximately 30% of total production was paid as the fee-everything included. This affects largely the security of rice consumption of these farmers, and 66% of them ended up rice shortage.