ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a broad overview of the interplay of global market forces on the pace of land-use change in the Lao PDR, with special focus on Oudomxay, a northern province of the country. Practically all farmers have shifted from subsistence to industrial crops, with the introduction of contract farming in about 2004 and the acceptance of the first foreign direct investments. There are eight emerging trends in the directions of the Lao PDR's agriculture and natural-resource policies that are contributing to the rapid transformation of swidden and fallow agriculture into permanent perennial cropping systems. From the government's point of view, the introduction of concession farming addressed three policy concerns: it maximized the economic benefits from underutilized lands; it contained the problems of 'slash-and-burn' agriculture; and it provided valuable foreign direct investment. There is also the danger of bio-invasion of unwanted species, which may spread like wildfire through an ecosystem dominated by monoculture vegetation.
