**5.1 Land acquisition for coffee production**

The most fundamental factor in agricultural production is land acquisition. The government of Lao PDR has the vision to promote the agricultural sector; the priority is to specify the existence of cultivated land expansion in the national framework. The survey and allocation of agricultural land have been carried out nationwide to allocate land to the district level. Land titles have been issued for farmers at the village level, equivalents to 43.2% of all villages across the country and cover 37.1% of the total districts [19] or about 800,000 pieces (Open Development Laos, 2019).

Land classification and land title are required to take into account as the factor affecting agriculture production because the potential of arable land, particularly

*Coffee - Production and Research*

and foster growth in rural areas [35].

**4. Rethinking of agricultural commercialization**

gender role in agricultural commercialization.

gies, and resources availability [37].

commercialization contributes to food security, poverty alleviation, rural and urban employment creation, improved livelihoods and social status, and economic growth via productivity and investment [7, 34]. The commercialized leads to negative effects such as no improvement household nutrition and livelihoods of the poorest, more risk complex market, household food insecurity, and insufficiency food [7, 17, 34]. Besides, the commercialization influences to income inequalities [7, 17]. Agricultural commercialization among poor smallholders is an issue that requires to pay attention to reduce poverty, improve household food and nutrition security,

Various discourses on agricultural commercialization provide background concept and the relation of the issue with regard to the definition of terms, process, and their relations. In this part, the interest is to reconstruct the agricultural commercialization to rethink how commercialization will lead to food security and

A classical thought argues that the commercialization of agriculture is a cause of poor nutrition [3]. Others argue that subsistence agriculture may not be a viable activity to secure sustainable household food security [13, 36]. Agricultural commercialization is thus provision of both opportunities for food security and income earning. One of the pathways to food security is to promote food crop productivity [5] that is to enhance household food supply. Pathways to promote food crop productivity are improving access to credits and inputs, input cost management, high-value crop investment, and investment in infrastructure and human capital. The element of food security is related to accessibility, availability, stability, and utilization of food [4]. Measuring food security can apply concept of consumption or calorie intake method, expenditure, nutritional food sufficiency, coping strate-

The most crucial question is to what extent the agricultural commercialization contributes to food security. The effect of agriculture commercialization on income and productivity seems positive, whether on the household level or for large scale producers; however, it depends on the allocation [2]. The allocation refers to resources management including land, labor, and capital toward production activities, which come to the decision of how to allocate or distribute these resources in order to achieve a greater benefit from this transformation. Since the household food availability and consumption depended on agriculture in many least developed and developing nations; the impact of agriculture commercialization should be evaluated for better application of the conceptual framework of agriculture commercialization. Despite the fact that the process of agriculture commercialization is positively affected, the income gains from selling crop in the market, which also enhancing household capacity to effort for food. However, food security and income have not yet shown a direct relationship. In terms of food security, there are still arguments for and in opposition to smallholder commercialization as a pathway for making sure household food security. Food security is also determined by farming activities, in which the shifting to cash crop may be led to the decrease of food crop cultivation. On the one hand, smallholder commercialization is assumed to

have damaging outcomes on household dietary and food safety status.

Indeed, the adverse impact of the process of commercialization on food security is still debatable among scholars. For example, Von Braun [38] argued that "commercialization has a direct effect on household's earning degree which likely results in a rise in food and non-meals expenditure" ([38]: 187). On the other hand,

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agriculture land, refers to the areas that can be brought for cultivation with soil, water, and climatic suitability. Pingali and Rosegrant [17] noted that "Agricultural commercialization means more than the marketing of agricultural output; it means [that] the product choice [s] and input use decisions are based on the principles of profit maximization" (n.p). Therefore, the land is a determinant factor of agriculture product inputs, acquisition of use or ownership rights to large areas of land for production of agricultural commodities, by farmers has recently attracted considerable interest.

Land use for coffee commercialization at the Bolaven Plateau, southern Laos consists of two forms, local own, and foreign private own. The former form is mainly smallholder coffee commercialization, who are local people, in which land use is only approximately 1–2 ha for coffee plantation. Based on the FATE household survey in 2015, the average land use for smallholder who could commercialize their coffee is 2.64 ha with a minimum of 0.10 ha, and the maximum land size is 20 ha. The majority of the farmers, about 45% owned land of 2.0–4.9 ha of agriculture land and 51% of these coffee land is used to plant Arabica coffee. There shows correlation between coffee commercialization and land use at a significant level. Access to cultivated land by the smallholders in the plateau is by three approaches including *Chap Chong* (Lao word means free land acquisition), land inheritance, and purchasing land use right [42].

The latter form, land use for coffee plantation is by foreign private ownership. After the economic liberalization policy has been applied under the NEM, the government of Laos (GoL) gives the permit to foreign investors to allow for land concession to various industries also for coffee plantation. The rapid proliferation of land concessions has been granted by the GoL to investors who are seeking to capitalize on the plateau's agriculture, forestry, hydropower, and mineral commodity chain potentialities [43–45]. The first agriculture land concession for a foreign private company to coffee planter was granted to Asia Tech in 1991 about 12,000 ha. A plenty number of smallholder coffee producer turned into the host of coffee concession, 37 of 84 villages in the Bolaven Plateau hosted at least one coffee concession in the administrative village; while 10 villages hosted two or more concession projects [46]. Today, the idea of land concession is still debatable in the institutional level; whereas, agriculture land concession demonstrates primarily to coffee commercialization.
