Perspective: What Lao PDR teaches us about feeding Asia's future

In March 2026, the Asian Development Bank brought together government leaders, scientists, investors, and development practitioners in Manila under the theme “Feeding the Future, Sustaining the Planet.” The Asia and the Pacific Food Systems Transformation Forum underscored a clear and accelerating consensus. Food systems across the region must undergo fundamental transformation, and the resources to support that shift are now being mobilised at significant scale. 

A central question, one that participants engaged with directly, is how that transformation reaches the woman preparing a meal in a remote upland village in Lao PDR. It is the question that distinguishes ambition from delivery and one that no single institution can address alone.

At the Forum, ADB President Masato Kanda confirmed that ADB had surpassed its 2022–2025 commitment of $14 billion for food security, reaching 62 million farmers and creating over 500,000 jobs across Asia and the Pacific. He announced a scale-up to a $40 billion agenda through 2030, with $26 billion in additional financing already committed. Southeast Asia alone is targeted for up to $8 billion of this investment. 

These numbers reflect the scale at which development finance is engaging the food systems agenda. They create a real opportunity, but only if investments are grounded in approaches that demonstrably improve what people eat, not just what farmers produce.

ENUFF brought together four components too often implemented in isolation: nutrition-sensitive agriculture, gender equity, social and behaviour change communication, and water, sanitation, and hygiene. Sustained nutrition outcomes depend on deliberate coordination linking district-level systems with household-level practices.

Village Nutrition Teams and District Nutrition Committees were central to this response. The approach engaged men as well as women on infant and young child feeding, and addressed barriers often treated as secondary: food taboos restricting nutrition during pregnancy, time poverty among working mothers, and limited access to fresh produce in remote communities.

Building on this, the work continues under the ADB-funded Sustainable Rural Infrastructure and Watershed Management Sector Project (SRIWMSP), now reaching 200 villages across five districts in the same provinces. SNV and WFP jointly implement the nutrition and WASH component, presenting findings from the programme at the Manila Forum in a session on behaviour change, healthy diets, and food systems. Interim findings to end of 2025 are encouraging: households producing three of four promoted food groups rose from 76 percent to 94 percent, and those growing eight vegetable types in the dry season increased from 28 percent to 58 percent.

Lao PDR carries a complex triple burden: persistent undernutrition in children, micronutrient deficiencies among women of reproductive age, and rising overweight. No single project resolves that. The strategic opportunity is a replicable model, embedded in government systems and aligned with national plans, including the National Action Plan on Sustainable Food Systems Transformation (2025-2030) and National Nutrition Strategy (2026-2030).

The Forum's farm-to-fork framing captures something important: food systems work only when all parts of the chain are functioning. A farmer growing more diverse crops is not enough if market access is limited, if processing and storage are inadequate, if women lack the time or knowledge to prepare nutritious food, or if cultural norms restrict what pregnant mothers eat. 

SNV does not suggest these challenges are fully resolved. What eight years in Lao PDR demonstrated is that they can be addressed — systematically, measurably, and in ways that outlast the project cycle. The Village Nutrition Teams established through ENUFF continue to operate. The government structures strengthened through the programme continue to coordinate. The dietary diversity gains, while still requiring further investment to be sustained at scale, are tangible. 

As ADB and its partners move from commitment to implementation of a $40 billion food systems agenda, the question of what works at the community level, in remote and underserved areas, with the populations most at risk, deserves a central place in programme design.