Lao PDR Food Security Monitoring - Remote Household Food Security Survey Brief (September 2022)
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- Lao PDR
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- WFP
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One in seven households in Lao PDR are food insecure (14 percent).1 The trajectory of the food security situation remains uncertain, with inflation rising to 34 percent in September, 2 and prices for key commodities creeping higher with each month. Additional monitoring of the situation in the coming months will remain crucial to informing action.
Food insecurity is affecting different parts of the country unequally. In some districts, around 25 percent of households are food insecure, while in others, 5 percent of households are food insecure. Notably, rural areas are more food insecure (17 percent) than those in urban areas (9 percent). The difference is particularly evident when considering the better food security situation in Vientiane Capital (5 percent).
Households with dropping incomes are especially affected. Those facing a significant reduction in income (>50 percent) are more than twice as likely to be food insecure (25 percent) than households with incomes that stayed the same or increased (10 percent).
Large parts of the population are relying on coping strategies to keep food on the table and meet other essential needs. More than half of households are turning to livelihood-based coping strategies such as spending. savings, cutting down on health expenditure, and borrowing money in order to buy food or meet other essential needs.
People are most worried about food price increases. Some 33 percent of households indicated that the rise in food prices is their top concern. This concern was more than three times higher than any other singular concern.
This comes as nearly a quarter of the population is reporting trouble in accessing markets (23 percent). The combination of rising prices, difficulty in accessing markets, and high reliance on coping strategies could lead to a worsening of the food security situation. Despite the demonstrable economic and social progress of the past few years,the impacts of COVID-19 coupled with the current global food crisis are threatening to reverse development gains in Lao PDR.