Thank you Charlotte, I found this contribution both disturbing and informative. One does get rather depressed at times at the state of the world and initiatives,such as the one you describe,do lift the gloom a bit.

SEDA Laos is no doubt doing a good job which is more than can be said for the Pathet Lao dictatorship - among whose members and their relatives you would never find malnutrition. The fact is that the policies and practices of the oppressive governing regime in Laos is responsible for the plight of the Lao people.

True, there is very little arable land, which should prompt one to ask why so little of it (less than 20%) is used for food production and why nearly all of the land which is used to produce food is only used to produce rice.

Government policy is what keeps 15%-20% of the Lao population seriously undernourished and forces 80% of the population to eek out a living through subsistence farming. It should be regarded as scandalous that over 50% of Laos GDP is attributed to subsistence farming.

It is not the scarcity of arable land which consigns most of the population to the existence they endure. It is the on-going, uncriticised political myopia of the Pathet Lao.