Smallholder farmers’ preference for climate change adaptation for lowland rain-fed rice production in lao pdr

In Lao PDR (People’s Democratic Republic), rice is one of the major staple crops planted in more than 80% of the cultivated areas. We attempted to evaluate the adaptation preference of the farmers in Laos through a climate change adaptation survey approach. The eight adaptations including irrigation, nitrogen fertilizer application rates, transplanting date shifting were first assessed by the CERES-Rice model for the two rice cultivars (TDK8 and TDK11). These adaptations with the projected rice yields were used to design the climate change adaptation survey to investigate farmers’ preference. One hundred smallholder farmers in Dongbung, Napork, Nakhaow, Hardvieng, and Parlai in Vientiane province, Laos were interviewed. For the rice yield projection, the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and RCP 8.5 were collected from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment-South Asia. The simulation results showed that the two adaptations (irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer application rates) were beneficial to reduce the negative impacts of climate change on rice yields under the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. On the other hand, the effects of the shifting transplanting dates were inconsistent, revealing that the transplanting date shifting may not be a sufficient adaption for this region to cope with climate change. The results from a climate change adaptation survey to investigate rice farmers’ preference in Vientiane Capital showed that the farmers preferred installing an irrigation system and applying the doubling nitrogen fertilizer application rate (120 kg-N ha^-1). However, many farmers replied that they are still indifferent to the adverse impacts of climate change on rice yields that can be reduced by implementing adaptation technologies, suggesting a further study to raise the farmers’ awareness of climate change. It is concluded that this study can be useful to enhance food security of Lao PDR by providing efficacious agricultural managements which reflect farmers’ preference.