Pangea Site Visit Laos - The Association of Green - January 2026

After spending time in Northern Thailand the Pangea site visit team traveled to Laos and visited with partner The Association of Green ("TAG").

Visiting a small farm harvesting bok choy outside of Vientiane, Laos with TAG

 TAG’s mission is to support, educate and encourage farmers and small farmers’ groups (such as cooperative farms) to engage in sustainable, environmentally sound and financially viable farming practices throughout Laos. Their goal is to help small farmers increase the value of their crops while being good stewards of the land and helping local communities prosper.

TAG has projects throughout Laos and manages them with a staff of just 7 employees, only one of whom is full time. During our two-day visit we first met with TAG's director who summarized TAG's projects throughout the country and shared with us some of TAG's recent successes and challenges. We learned that budget cuts and loss of funding from large international aid agencies has impacted TAG. Many TAG employees also work with other nonprofits and have significant expertise in their fields. They believe in TAG's mission and are drawn to it as a way to work directly with farmers and to help them find sustainable practices to address their current issues.

TAG shares office space in Vientiane with other Lao Civil Society Organizations

Examples of ways in which TAG helps local farmers include:

• providing members with access to “master farmers”, other members who have successfully implemented innovative methods and techniques related to irrigation, water management, solar power for irrigation pumps, the use of mulches to preserve soil moisture, organic fertilizers, construction techniques for greenhouses and drying houses, marketing, etc.  

• organizing information sharing meetings and facilitating member travel to regional conferences concerning advancements in sustainable agriculture. 

• operating a small financing program where no or low cost loans are provided to farmers to allow them to refinance high-interest bank loans, stave off foreclosure in the event of crop loss or price drops, and avoid or minimize reliance on “middlemen” who provide liquidity by pre-purchasing crops at very low prices. 

We continued learning about TAG and its projects as we visited several farms in rural areas on the outskirts of Vientiane.

We came away from the visit with a much greater appreciation for the energy, enthusiasm, expertise and commitment of TAG employees. Their work with small farmers and efforts to help the farmers improve their farms and livelihoods by incorporating sustainable practices into their farms was inspiring. In return, we saw that the farmers welcomed the visit and were very appreciative of all the help they receive from TAG. It was clear to us that Pangea's support of TAG is making a meaningful and lasting difference to people's lives.

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 Visit our SE Asia Grant Partner page for more information about the organizations we are currently supporting in SE Asia.

Read more about our Site Visits, or learn more about the Pangea Experience. Questions? Email us at info@pangea-giving.org.