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collateral was needed from her household. Before joining the group, she and her husband farmedupland rice on 1 ha of land which they stopped cultivating because of problems with flooding. Theyalso worked as casual labourers for other farmers but have stopped doing this since joining the groupas they are now too busy growing organic vegetables. Having heard of the benefits of groupmembership from other farmers, they were optimistic that these changes in their livelihood activitieswill lead to significant improvements in their household’s cash income.The NAFES project has also organised training and field days for group members to visit farmers inother areas. For example, corn was already being planted by individual households in Choum, butafter the group was formed by the project, NAFES provided training on harvesting, marketing andplanting techniques. In principle it is the head of the household (the husband) who attends trainings onthe NAFES project, but in Choum it was mostly the wives who attended trainings because much ofthe work in feed corn production involves the use of machinery and is mostly done by men, so theywere too busy to attend the trainings. In Cheng village, NAFES also provided group members withtraining on plantation and post-harvest techniques. In contrast to Choum, all women and men in theCheng group attended trainings but only the men went on the overseas study visits that wereorganised by the project because “they involved travelling”.There were some interesting insights with regards to the labour dimension in Cheng village. Withinrice seeds production, husbands and wives worked together in the fields for planting but the husbandswere more involved in the post-harvesting work because it has been mechanised by the project and“requires more physical strength”. Further, the mechanisation of production has eliminated the needfor casual labour, whereas before joining the project, member households used casual labour for ricetransplanting and harvesting because they were getting old and no longer had children living at homewho could help them farm. Mechanisation has also reduced the labour contribution of women inharvesting. However, focus group participants reported that overall labour requirements in the fieldshave increased slightly with the NAFES project and more substantially on post-harvesting because ofthe rice seeds value chain. As a result, they “don’t have any free time” but nonetheless reported beingmotivated to use their time “more effectively and intensively”, following entrepreneurship trainingprovided by the project. Group members thus worked harder overall but were earning more cashincome. Women in Cheng village also used to be responsible for rice milling, but now they have ricemills and it has become men’s job to carry bags of rice to and from the mills. In sum, participants feltthat the project had increased men’s work and reduced women’s, thereby creating more balancebetween the sexes, while leaving the management of household money in the hands of the women,who were largely Lao Loum in this village.The NAFES project also seemed to be having an influence on broader gender and social relations inBungphao village among those taking part in organic vegetable farming. One woman explained howthe project in Bungphao has benefited farmers at two levels. At the community level, group membersnow exchange experiences and communicate more, as well as assist each other with farming, whereasbefore joining the group all households worked individually. At the family level, there is now morecohesion within the family because husband and wife are working together within the project on thesame plot of land and generating more cash income. Before the project started, this woman’s husbandwould work on another plot of land across the river and on different crops, and they would see eachother only in the evenings. Now they spend about four days per week farming organic vegetablestogether in their household’s greenhouse at the project site, and the other two days on their land acrossthe river growing and maintaining different kinds of cash crops such as corn and fruit trees.In sum, this alternative for smallholders to either contract farming or plantation agriculture, seemed tohave very positive gender and equity implications for local labour and income-generatingopportunities. Challenges remain, however, with respect to sustainability beyond the project lifetime,in terms of developing partnerships between the farmer groups and private investors and of upgradingand strengthening the capacity of the farmer groups beyond the scope of the project. Moreover, thereare challenges for gender equality and women’s empowerment because women in general tended to44