LAOS – Lao farmers bounce back from the impacts of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic brought significant challenges to smallholder farmers. Since 2020, they have faced declining demand from domestic markets, complete loss of market access during lockdowns, limited public transportation, rising transport costs, and increasing prices of production inputs.

As a result, many farmers were forced to let their fresh produce go to waste—sometimes even using it as animal feed. Others had to cut down on production, and some stopped farming altogether due to lack of capital.

To help farmers recover from these losses, the ARISE-Farmers Project introduced a revolving fund that provided much-needed working capital. Through this initiative, the Lao Farmer Network extended financial support to 13 farmers’ organizations engaged in coffee, poultry, livestock, vegetable, and rice production—helping them restart operations and rebuild their livelihoods.

The Assuring Resiliency of Family Farmers (ARISE-Farmers) initially started as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic – to empower farmers’ groups to meet their members’ needs and ensure their health and sufficient food supply during the pandemic. Due to the program’s success, it has been renewed for a new phase. The project aims to strengthen the capacities of farmers’ organizations (FOs) to manage production support to members and expand the existing 4Ps partnership in order to address the financing gap and access to the market. ARISE showcases farmers as solution providers to a more resilient farming system and contributes to achieving the SDG goal of ending hunger and poverty.