VietNamNet Bridge - International experience confirms that
agricultural modernization always goes with the systematic concentration of
land and the increase of the average land area of farmer households, and this
trend will take place in Vietnam.
Land accumulation is said to be
the basic way to improve agricultural productivity, income and to boost exports
of agricultural products in a sustainable way.
Vietnam has 14.5 million farmer
households, with nearly 70 million plots of field. The sizes of these plots of
field vary and are generally small. Land dispersion in the north is more
popular than in the south.
There are many documents
referring to the disadvantage of land fragmentation. Land scatter hinders
agricultural modernization; reduces the efficiency of resource use because
people cannot take advantage of the economics of scale; increases production
and marketing costs; makes it difficult for farmers to coordinate production
with scattered plots of field; increases social costs in promoting land
concentration. Land fragmentation also causes land waste for the building of
field edge paths; wastes time for moving between field plots; and causes
difficulties in shipping products.
There are many references that
mention the benefits of concentration of land, including the ability to
increase productivity through mechanization, labor productivity through the effective
organization and monitoring of production, optimizing fixed capital; to reduce
input costs per unit average (seed, fertilizer, etc.); and to increase
transport efficiency.
The concentration of land also
allows local governments to easily improve infrastructure for agriculture that
have not been done previously because field plots were too small. The final
advantage of land concentration is the large-scale production allowing the
application of modern technology.
It should be noted that the
disadvantages of land fragmentation and the benefits of land accumulation are
related to financial and administrative aspects. We often ignore the views of
farmers when it comes to this issue.
Why do farmers not realize the
ineffectiveness and the cost of land fragmentation, and why do they not
voluntarily reorganize their land? What prevents farmers who do small-scale
production in the world from joining their neighbors to accumulate land to
significantly reduce production costs and other expenses?
The short answer is land scatter
does not seem to be a serious problem for farmers in Vietnam as well as in
other countries who apply the model of small-scale agricultural production.
If the land is considered the
basic properties of farmers, but farmers still persevere with land scatter, it
means they still see the key benefits of land scatter in fact.
Part of a more complete answer to
this problem is to land accumulation is only an advantage for farmers who have
a lot of land (or groups of farmers participating in cooperatives), and have
the financial ability to mechanize production.
Lack of capital to expand fields
and implement mechanization are the causes for farmers who do small-scale
production believe that land scatter is appropriate to their ability in increasing
production, income and wealth with the set conditions for different soil
quality, availability of resources other than land and limited tolerance to
risk.
The third part of the answer is
for farmers who apply small-scale production, the cost spent for unilateral
efforts to accumulate land exceeds the benefits that they can gain in the
future.
For farmer households, land
fragmentation has many advantages. It helps level risks, allows access to land
with many different farming characteristics (slope, orientation, location,
type, fertility); allows product diversification; allows resources (especially
labor) are distributed efficiently over time and activities; enhances the
liquidity of land assets.
Although farmers can allocate
land and resources in accordance with their circumstances, they can still be
poor and face food insecurity. Problems arise from the lack of productive
resources such as capital (including land), human resources, finance and
necessary information. Thus, the lack of resources affects the welfare of rural
households and impedes the development of the rural rather than land
dispersion.
In Vietnam, land dispersion is
derived from poverty (farmers could not afford to buy more fields), social
pressure (After cooperatives were dissolved, land was distributed equally among
the members of villages), and by cultivation methods (farmers choose to work on
multiple plots of field to diversify production and reduce risk). The degree of
land dispersion is also affected by the population pressure. Arable land per
capita in Vietnam is only a little more than 1,000m2. This is one of the lowest
numbers in the world.
Although land dispersion is
detrimental to production, it does not highly affect soil productivity and this
has been observed worldwide. Despite the high degree of land dispersion and
fragmentation, agricultural land productivity and total production (rice, corn,
livestock) of Vietnam have been increasing significantly.
However, the average income of
farmers has increased relatively slow or not increased despite the
aforementioned improvements. This is not related to the reorganization of land.
Instead, the problem is that farmers generally cannot afford to finance additional
production inputs, including land. Land accumulation for a country that is
shortage of land as Vietnam cannot help farmers have more land.
Senior officials have tried to
encourage the reduction of land scatter. The demand for land concentration has
been raised and there are suggestions for action. Former Minister of Natural
Resources and Environment said: "We will not be able to develop
large-scale agricultural production with high competitiveness in the
international economic integration process if we continue with small
agricultural production. That is why the Party and Government urge land
concentration."
This has been confirmed in a
press release on November 2008: "At the November meeting of the
Government, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung confirmed: the Land Law will be
amended to promote land concentration. The Budget Law will be also amended to
increase investment in agricultural production, and farmer and rural
development."
The common logic that we see in
most of the field trips to provinces is that only big and well-organized
landowners (including individuals, cooperatives, corporations) can have access
to capital to implement mechanization. Other officials have argued that land
concentration is necessary for widespread adoption of agro-processing
technology and the commercialization of agriculture. Land concentration is also
seen as a solution to increase employment.
Despite the emphasis on this
issue, the government remains cautious. In the second half of the 1990s the
government began to encourage voluntarily land accumulation to improve
production efficiency. The Government avoids using administrative measures to
force land concentration. To successfully implement land accumulation, three
tasks must be done. Firstly, land must be concentrated, for example, the
scattered fields must be been combined in a certain order. Secondly, field
scale should be increased. Thirdly, farm households and farmers whose fields
are acquired must have resettlement areas and new sources of income.
While the first two tasks are
relatively easy for implementation by administrative measures (particularly
through land recovery by the State), the third task will be much harder. Lands
concentration, expanding production scale can have advantages in improving
productivity, increasing exports. The downside of it is large numbers of
farmers will lose land and they will have to struggle to adapt to new
circumstances. More importantly, many farmers who have no land do not want to
leave farming. In any form, lives and welfare of farmers who lose land will be
also affected.
Because of these reasons, in
Vietnam, the question is not whether land concentration is correct or not, but
how to handle the social, economic, political consequences of programs of
coercive concentration of land and expand production scale.
Such programs have to face
questions like: Who will decide which land should be concentrated? Which
criteria should be used? Who will benefit from this process and how? Who will
lose and how much loss? How much more the government should compensate for
farmers, especially those who lose all of their fields (life-changing and
livelihood loss) to achieve the national target of increasing production,
export expansion and modernization agriculture?
As being mentioned above, the
Government has always been careful to avoid forcing the concentration of land
through administrative measures. Some districts have been very successful in
mobilizing people to voluntarily participate in land concentration to support
mechanization or convert to pig and poultry farming. The support from the
government for farms is pretty well. The objective is "proving economic
efficiency, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and making the most of land
area and water surface, and contributing significantly to the country's
integration process."
Data of the Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development shows that by mid-2009, there were 150,102
farms across the country with an average area of 6 hectares. This number has
increased to nearly 8,600 a year from 2000, and these farms employed
approximately 510,000 employees in 2009.
The World Bank’s analysis shows
that when the expansion of land use rights in different legal documents has
assisted land redistribution. The ability to hire, sell and/or transfer the
land use right has helped farmers who operate least effectively sell their land
or get out of agriculture. This allows farmers with higher production
effectiveness to expand land and promote large-scale production. These changes
are still modest but they have made certain impacts. One of them is the area of
agricultural land per capita increases to over 1ha.
This positive development can
only continue when the rest of the economy expands accordingly. Economic growth
allows workers to have the opportunity to move out of the agricultural sector
and create more primary resources in the agricultural sector to invest to
increase productivity. Data analysis shows that the two processes are going on
the right route in Vietnam.
Policy implication is that even
without administrative intervention, but there are a lot of positive adjustment
in land concentration has taken place. Currently, agricultural production and
exports continue to grow thanks to farmers adjusting production mode, switching
to more profitable activities, improving farming and land management skills,
making good use of information and opportunities on the market. This allows
farmers rationalize the existing land area through voluntary land concentration
and under market signals. The government should continue to support this trend.
Ho Dang Hoa Le Thi Quynh Tram,
Pham Duy Nghia and Malcolm F. McPherson
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