2017 年 61 巻 4 号 p. 166-178
To assess the impact of labour-saving practices on farming management and its economic rationality in swidden agriculture of Laos, field surveys were conducted in a rural village in which herbicide application, outsourcing services in threshing and harvesting and late-maturing varieties for efficient harvesting during the dry season have rapidly expanded. With the enhanced labour efficiency, upland farmers extended the field size and produced a large volume of upland rice far exceeding consumption demand. The extent of swidden agriculture and the dependence on labour-saving practices were higher in the farmer group with field parcels in remote areas (FR) than in the farmer group with field parcels in non-remote areas (FNR). Irrespective of the higher production cost, the FR group represented approximately 70% of total upland farmers and achieved higher upland rice production and higher labour productivity than the FNR group. These findings suggest that the high demand for cash income is a causal factor for the emergence of labour-saving practices, and its wide acceptance could be attributed to its high economic rationality. However, the labour-saving farming strategy for large-area cultivation, together with the increasing population density due to immigration inflow during a past decade, resulted in deforestation and forest degradation at the village scale. For a sustainable development, a gradual shift in cash income sources from swidden agriculture to sedentary agriculture must be achieved by employing the labour force made available by labour-saving practices in new alternatives to field-size extension.
