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Farming Systems Analysis of Farmhouseholds at Dinh hoa District, the Northern Uplands of Vietnam
Dissertation Abstract:
The major objectives of this study were to (1) analyze the various aspects of upland farming, (2) determine the inter-relationship between the influencing factors and existing land-use types at the farm-household and district level, and (3) design specific farming systems for the uplands of the Northern Uplands of Vietnam. The study was conducted at Dinh hoa district of Thainguyen province, Vietnam. Both agroecosystem and statistical analysis methods were used. Informal and formal surveys involving 204 respondents were done from February to May 1998.
Dinh hoa is a typical mountainous district in which the diversity of landscapes and cultures had affected the configuration of its land-use types as well as farming systems. Being hilly to mountainous district, soil erosion, drought, poor economics, infrastructure, and extension, and relatively low knowledge were the main production constraints. While there were many identified problems in the district, Dinh hoa has unique ecological comparative advantages. Its elevation confers sub-tropical climate conducive for planting high value fruit trees which could not be grown in the lowlands.
Six agroecosystems with their main farming systems were analyzed. Fish and fingerling raising in ponds had the highest productivity and resource use efficiency. Growing fruit trees in the garden brought more income for the family. Rice-ricewinter crop was promising on irrigated land. Legume crop-rice was suitable for the rainfed lands. On the upland field, tea cultivation was the most suitable as it generated more income and soil loss was minimal.
Results had shown two unique farm household ways in coping with food security. In remote areas, “in situ food security” with food crop production was the dominant practice. In areas where access to road and market exists, farming orientation shifts into “food security by money” with fruits and tea as dominant crops. However, the change in farming systems was impaired by traditional habits such as practice of free range animals raising. Farming systems involving food crops such as upland rice, cassava, and field crop-field crop sequence showed the highest rate of soil erosion. Growing food crops on the slope grater that 10 degrees caused serious soil erosion. Growing tea and orchard, which provides high soil canopy cover protected soil from erosion. However, farmer’s recognition of soil erosion was low. Very few soil conservation practices had been adopted.
Richer diversity was found in the remote region such as Region 1 while more specialized farming was observed in Region 2. Difficult physical condition pushed farmers toward higher diversity as an adaptation measure. Under homogenous physical condition, farmers tended to adopt specialized farming since diversity was found to have negative effect on income.
The estimated water requirement showed that majority of annual crop farming systems suffered water deficiency, particularly in April and October. Water use efficiency was highest in permanents crops such as in tea and fruit trees. Nitrogen was identified as the growth limiting factor in the uplands. In farming system involving food crops, the loss via economic products ranged from 27.3 to 60 percent, via soil erosion from 13.6 to 42.5 percent and via crop residues (if residues are burned or removed) from 16.4 to 35.4 percent. This proved that application of soil conservation practices, residue recycling and the complement of fertilizers are necessary to maintain crop productivity and soil nutrients. A balanced status of nitrogen was also found in farming system that included legumes.
The factors that positively affected household income included areas of pond, irrigated, upland, livestock, off-farm activities, family labor, cash availability, and information access. The on-farm income was affected positively by the area of grown crops, pond, livestock, family labor force, and cash availability. It was negatively affected by off-farm activities and the household’s income diversity. Logit analysis showed that the educational level of family head and family cash availability positively affected the adoption of fish raising. The adoption of rice-rice winter crop was influenced by the area of irrigated, rainfed land, and farm location. Extension roles, family location, and area of garden played positively in farmer’s adoption of growing fruit tree on their garden. The area of irrigated land, however, had negative effects. For upland field, adoption of tea growing was negatively affected by the area of garden, irrigated land, and off-farm activities while the area of upland field gave opportunity for growing it. Analysis of farm management efficiency by using Multiple Goals Linear Programming tool revealed that most households reached only half of their optimum attainable income. This revealed that the potential or opportunities of farming are still very high. Further studies on proper arrangement of the farming systems are necessary before they are adopted by farmers.