With
the industrial parks’ investors failing to make progress on infrastructure
development on the huge areas of paddy land in the Mekong Delta that have been
cleared for their numerous establishments, many local farmers are now making
use of the deserted sites as paddy fields.
Last December, the National Assembly passed a
resolution, stating that the country should preserve the 3.8 million hectares
of paddy land by 2020. However, both scientists and local authorities in the
Mekong Delta fear that achieving the target will not be easy.
The country’s largest granary, the Mekong
Delta accounts for 90 percent of the annual total rice export volumes, but
paddy land areas have increasingly decreased over the last few years, with
haphazard investments of industrial parks (IP) around the delta.
Local farmers have leased plots of land that
have been left abandoned for years inside the IPs to start their crops.
For instance, Nguyen Van Dung, a farmer from
Hau Giang Province, said he and many other farmers are now tending dozens of
hectares of rice and other crops inside the Song Hau Industrial Park in Chau
Thanh District.
The IP completed site clearance in 2007, but
no construction has ever begun, leaving most of the 340-ha area covered with
grass.
“I have been waiting for so long, but have
seen no plants ever be built in the zone,” said Dung.
Although Dung has granted his land plot to the
establishment of the IP, and received compensation, he has now returned to the
site to start his crops again.
Meanwhile, Ha Van Tuan, another local farmer,
said he also wanted to tend his paddy inside the IP.
“But it will require a large sum of money to
clear the weeds and grass on the site,” said Tuan.
“In this IP, you can grow as large an area as
you wish, as long as you can afford the expense of grass clearing.”
Similarly, local authorities of Soc Trang
Province in 2007 also cleared 180-ha of paddy land at Soc Trang city to give
place to the An Hiep IP. Despite the considerably developed infrastructure, two
thirds of the park area still remains deserted after five years.
Local farmers have thus demanded to lease the
plots and restart their agricultural production.
“It was too wasteful leaving such fertile land
deserted,” said Nguyen Van Phuoc, a farmer who has been running a 100-ha farm
to grow watermelon, rice, and sweet potatoes in An Hiep IP over the last two
years.
The largest benefit of growing rice inside the
IP is that it can keep local authorities away from the reputation of wasting
land, and local farmers whose lands have been reclaimed and cleared can now
earn their livelihood by working on his farm, he said.
Around 100 farmers work on his farm, each
earning VND100,000 a day.
Other causes for paddy-land loss
Many farmers have also converted the purpose
of their land through their own initiative, contributing to the rapid decline
of paddy land over the last few years.
Ho Quang Cua, deputy head of Soc Trang
Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said 250,000 hectares of
fertile paddy land in the coastal areas in Mekong Delta have been converted
into ponds for raising shrimps.
“In the years to come, under the ‘new rural
areas’ policy, much land intended for rice crops will also have to give way to
the construction of roads, urban areas, and industrial clusters,” said Cua.
In Tien Giang and Dong Thap provinces, farmers
have also converted their rice fields into orchards, local authorities said.
Authorities can not prevent or ban farmers
from doing so, due to the lack of penalty measures, they said.
Nguyen Van Sanh, head of the Mekong Delta
Research and Development Institute, said there is a paradox that any provinces
growing rice will be considered a “poor province,” and thus local farmers of
that province are also considered poor.
This has lead to the fact that localities have
scrambled to industrialize, he said.
“Moreover, rice farmers cannot earn as much of
a profitas those cultivating fruits or seafood, so we cannot force them to keep
on tending their paddies .”
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