It’s rice harvest time in northern Laos (new video)

XIENG KHOUANG, LAOS – It’s Fall in northern Laos, time to harvest the annual rice crop.

Laos’ beautiful mountainous countryside is filled with terraced rice fields, forming a patchwork mosaic of colorful polygons as far as the eye can see.

While neighboring Vietnamese rice farmers can grow two crops a year (three in the south), northern Lao farmers get only one crop each year.

Nearly all the work is done by hand

The Laotian rice harvest is labor-intensive. Nearly all work is done by hand, from cutting and binding the sheaves of grain to piling them into towering haystacks.

When the crop is ready, it’s “all hands on deck.” Men and women work side by side from dawn to dusk cutting, carrying and stacking the grain in an all-out race to bring in the harvest.

Watch our video below…