Index of Vietnam Articles | Rural Sociology at UA Home Page | D. Voth’s Home Page

Despite problems, Vietnam agriculture makes strides

By Christina Verderosa

Many of the most successful innovations in Vietnamese agriculture come from the research done at the Hoa An Research Station, a part of Can Tho University, located in the Mekong Delta.

Duong Van Ni, director of the Research Station, met with the Peacework delegation during our recent trip to Vietnam and conducted a tour of the facility. Ni explained how the story of Vietnamese agriculture turned from one of failure to one of success. But in the process of achieving these successes, Vietnamese farmers have ended facing the same problems as American farmers.

After the war ended in 1975, Vietnam was embargoed and “food was the top priority. All the effort went into a push to produce more,” Ni said. However, by 1985, the state farms were failing. During a meeting in 1986, a land reform policy called the “renovation” was introduced. Ni explained that land was released back to the farmers, and by 1990, Vietnam was the third largest exporter of rice after Thailand and the U.S. “People here are very proud about exporting rice,” Ni said.

“Rice was still the top priority until 2000,” Ni said. Vietnamese farmers discovered that they faced the same problem as American rice farmers, that is, “they couldn’t make money growing rice.” At that point another meeting was called of local farmers, government organizations, and others involved in agriculture. As a result of this meeting, farmers were given more options to plant different crops. “It will depend more on demand than planning,” Ni said.

Rather than trying to keep increasing rice yields, Ni said, the goal now is to maintain rice exports at current levels, and to reallocate what crops are grown where. “A lot of times the target has been yield,” Ni said. “Right now the target is quality. The yield may be lower, but the price is higher.” To improve quality, many farmers are returning to more traditional varieties of rice. “They can also integrate shrimp and fish with traditional rice,” Ni added.

Donald Voth, Peacework delegation leader and professor of rural sociology at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville, pointed out fields along the road on the way to Hoa An, where old and new rice varieties grew side by side. He said the traditional varieties could be easily identified since they grew taller and fell over, making them harder to harvest and decreasing the yield. However, many people prefer the taste of the traditional varieties, so the farmers can get higher prices for them. The main characteristic of the new varieties of rice is, “dwarfism,” Voth explained.

The Hoa An agricultural research station itself began as the state farms were collapsing. One of those farms was at Hoa An. “The university said they needed one for research and for an extension service,” Ni said. “We sent a letter to the local government and eventually got 200 acres.”

The people in the Mekong Delta area are very poor, Ni explained. The illiteracy rate is higher than normal. To help them requires more than just introducing higher-yield crops. “We have opened a school, organized credit, set up a women’s Union and a Farmers’ Association.” Research is also continuing at the station on integrating crops together and on protecting the environment.

“All of this is done in cooperation with the local farmers,” Ni said. Any farmer who wishes to learn more about agricultural techniques and practice them can come in and use the station’s experimental fields.

Since 1978, Can Tho University has been sending students to rural areas. Students work closely with farmers. “They are eating with them, working with them, living with them and learning from them,” Ni said. However, recently the university launched an initiative to change the way it taught agriculture. The program, funded by the Shell foundation, is intended to improve education, manage the environment, and improve teaching methods. One of the experts brought in was Voth who gave seminars for the supervising teachers. The University has also been working closely with Michigan State University, who sent in experts in September to explain mew methodologies. “We’re moving away from straight lectures,” Ni said. “We’re trying to change the atmosphere of learning and teaching.”

At the research station, students and farmers grow rice and a number of other crops in experimental fields. They can use these fields to try out new technology and methods of farming. One method farmers are trying out is the use of row machines, which save the amount of seed used by 50%. The farmer walks along with this box and drops the seeds. They can also use these fields to test new varieties of plants and seeds. “The farmers accept the new methods, because they work them,” Ni said.

One rice field is home to a pen of ducklings. Ni explained that the ducks would eat insects in the rice fields, if they were trained from an early age to do so. “If you feed them they will just live there’” Ni said.

The station also conducts considerable research in improving soil and water quality using native plants. Ni pointed out plants growing in the streams on the station such as water hyacinths, which not only help water quality, but also are edible. He showed the Peacework delegation an area where an experiment has been going on for the past six years to fully use the acidic soil of the region.

He showed a forest of melalucca trees, which are considered a weed in the U.S. the roots of the melaleuca grow deep below the acidic soil and bring up nutrients, Ni explained. Once the trees are cut, the soil is now suitable for other crops. However, the wood is also a useful crop. The trees are fast growing, live in all conditions, and the thick bark is fire resistant. “Last month we exported melaleuca wood for the first time.”

Water from the fields where rice is grown is also routed through the forest, where the water is recycled back into the fields. This water also provides a spawning area for fish. “The native fish have been reduced by intensive farming,” Voth said. “When the melaleuca comes back, the fish have a place for spawning.”

The research station is not just a place where farmers come to learn, but also a community where many of them live. When the University took over the old state farm, they had to take care of the families living there. In addition, the station has taken some families who had been living in sampans (boats) on the Mekong River. Although living conditions on the station are primitive by American standards, living in one place gives these families many advantages over living on a boat.

“The children can now go to school,” Ni said. “And the family can now try to get ahead.”

The goal of the station, Ni said is, “long term development. Human resources are our top priority.”

Changes in the approach to agriculture are also underway at the University of Agriculture and Forestry in Hue in central Vietnam. In a briefing to the Peacework delegation, director of the Center for Rural Development in Central Vietnam Hoang Manh Quan and the deputy head of the Department of Sciences Nguyen Thi Thanh explained that the approach to agriculture is changing from a “top-down” to a “bottom-up” approach.

Quan talked about “participatory action research,” where students and staff work with the farmers to find out their problems and solutions that suit the farmer best. He gave the example of meeting with farmers and their families to decide what type of construction projects are most needed in the village, “a school, a health care station.” The government will then provide the money for the project.

To further implement this “bottom-up” approach, the University is introducing a new degree program in Rural Development. Quan explained that the problem with many of the agricultural specialists now, is that they are specialists. “There’s a professional bias,” he said. “If your field is animal science, you go to a rural area and you look only at the animals.”

The Rural Development students, “need to know everything,” not just an area of specialty.

Quan said that farmers in central Vietnam face considerable problems. “The Central Region is the poorest and has the fewest resources,” he said. Problems include erosion and natural disasters such as typhoons. The forestry industry is still suffering the effects of heavy fighting around Hue during the war.

Agriculture students start out working on experimental farms at the University and then go to work in rural areas. “They go live in a village and stay with a family,” Quan said.

It helps that many of the students are from farm families. “Students from the central area work hard since they come from poor areas. They are willing to work in rural villages.”

In response to a question about what the rural development graduates would do, Quan said, “This is a program to train leaders of the communities.”

___________________________________________________________________________

Originally published in the DeWitt Era-Enterprise (DeWitt, Arkansas), February 28, 2002

___________________________________________________________________________

Index of Vietnam Articles | Rural Sociology at UA Home Page | D. Voth’s Home Page