Cash and chemicals: for Laos, Chinese banana boom a blessing and curse
BOKEO, LAOS: Kongkaew Vonusak smiles when he recalls the arrival of Chinese investors in his tranquil village in northern Laos in 2014.
With them came easy money, he said.
The Chinese offered villagers up to US$ 720 per hectare to rent their land, much of it fallow for years, said Kongkaew, 59, the village chief. They wanted to grow bananas on it.
In impoverished Laos, the offer was generous.
“They told us the price and asked us if we were happy. We said okay.”
Elsewhere, riverside land with good access roads fetched at least double that sum. Three years later, the Chinese- driven banana boom has left few locals untouched, but not everyone is smiling.
Experts say the Chinese have brought jobs and higher wages to northern Laos, but have also drenched plantations with pesticides and other chemicals.
Last year, the Lao government banned the opening of new banana plantations after a state- backed institute reported that the intensive use of chemicals had sickened workers and polluted water sources.
China has extolled the benefits of its vision of a modern- day ‘Silk Road’ linking it to the rest of the world – it holds a major summit in Beijing on May 14-15 to promote it.
The banana boom pre- dated the concept, which was announced in 2013, although China now regards agricultural developments in Laos as among the initiative’s projects.
Under the ‘Belt and Road’ plan, China has sought to persuade neighbours to open their markets to Chinese investors.
For villagers like Kongkaew, that meant a trade- off.
“Chinese investment has given us a better quality of life. We eat better, we live better,” Kongkaew said.
But neither he nor his neighbours will work on the plantations, or venture near them during spraying.
They have stopped fishing in the nearby river, fearing it is polluted by chemical run- off from the nearby banana plantation.
Several Chinese plantation owners and managers expressed frustration at the government ban, which forbids them from growing bananas after their leases expire.
They said the use of chemicals was necessary, and disagreed that workers were falling ill because of them.
“If you want to farm, you have to use fertilizers and pesticides,” said Wu Yaqiang, a site manager at a plantation owned by Jiangong Agriculture, one of the largest Chinese banana growers in Laos.
“If we don’t come here to develop, this place would just be bare mountains,” he added, as he watched workers carrying 30-kg bunches of bananas up steep hillsides to a rudimentary packing station.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he was not aware of the specific issues surrounding Chinese banana growers in Laos, and did not believe they should be linked directly to the Belt and Road initiative.
“In principle we always require Chinese companies, when investing and operating abroad, to comply with local laws and regulations, fulfil their social responsibility and protect the local environment,” he told a regular briefing on Thursday.
Laos’ Ministry of Agriculture did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment for this article. — Reuters