With limited opportunities for agricultural expansion in the lowlands (i.e. most of the lowland areas have already been converted into paddy fields), increasing rice production representsa key challenge for the subsistence farmers of the plain of Jars. Yet, in the quasi-absence of chemical fertilization, the productivity of lowland agriculture is strongly linked to upland cattle breeding and the availability of manure

Since the mid-2000s, land-use in Kham basin and Nonghet hillsides has come to be dominated by hybrid maize mono-cropping. The rapid expansion of this commercial crop has a tremendous impact on both the local economy and the environment. Maize has not only replaced existing gardens, chilli and fruit tree plantations but it has also expanded at the expense of forests and former fallow land. With the transition towards intensive commercial agriculture, agricultural productivity has increased considerably while rural poverty has receded. Yet, a growing number of farmers are now confronted with land degradation issues (e.g. soil erosion, lowland siltation, weed pressure and chemical pollution), excessive production costs and indebtedness. In this context, the activities promoted by PRONAE have focused on accompanying the ‘maize boom’ and, in particular, mitigating its potentially negative impacts by developing DMC-based maize cropping systems.

Constrained by a hilly topography and long distances to the main economic centers of the province, agriculture in the northern part of Kham district has long been dominated by traditional slash-and-burn shifting cultivation. In general, the plots are cropped with glutinous rice during one year, sometimes planted with traditional maize varieties the following year, and left fallowed for 3 to 15 years depending on the distance of the plot to the village and the associated land pressure. In these forested environments, NTFPs are traditionally an important source of food.