Planting of rice in Vietnam

General information

* GNI per capita PPP$, 2000: 2,000
* Internal renewable water resources: 376 km3
* Main food consumed: rice, roots and tubers, meat, sugar and honey, fruits
* Rice consumption, 1999: 170.3 kg milled rice per person per year


Vietnam is located along the eastern margin of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia, extending from 8° to 23° N latitude. It is bounded by Cambodia, Lao PDR, China, and the South China Sea.

It is in AEZ 3, characterized as warm humid tropics. Over 30% of the country is forested and about 17% is cultivated for seasonal crops, with another 5% under permanent crops. Climate varies from humid tropical in the southern lowlands to temperate in the northern highlands. There are two monsoon seasons: the northeastern winter monsoon and the southwestern summer monsoon. Destructive typhoons sometimes develop over the South China Sea during hot weather. Mean annual sea level temperatures decline from 27 °C in the south to 21 °C in the extreme north.

Mean annual rainfall ranges from 1,300 to 2,300 mm. Rainfall is usually evenly distributed in June to October or November. In the Mekong Delta, the summer monsoon brings 5-6 months of rainfall above 100 mm/mo. October is the wettest month of the year.

The population of Vietnam was about 79 million in 1999 with an average density of 245/ km2. The population grew at 1.7%/yr during the 1990s. Eighty percent of the population is rural and concentrated in the two rice-growing deltas: the Red River Delta in the north and the Mekong River Delta in the south. Total labor force was 42 million, with two-thirds engaged in agriculture. The agricultural labor force grew by 17% during the 1990s compared with a 23% growth in total labor force.




Recent developments in the rice sector
The gross domestic product was estimated at US$27.2 billion for 1998. Agriculture continues to play a dominant role, contributing 21% to the GDP and 30% of total export earnings.

Rice is the single most important crop. It is cultivated on 4.2 million ha out of 5.7 million ha of arable land. The planted area for rice increased from 5.6 million ha in 1980 to 7.7 million ha in 2000. Cropping intensity has reached 183%, the highest in the world. The rapid increase in rice area and the intensity of rice cropping have been made possible by heavy investment in flood control, drainage, irrigation that turned the flood-prone ecosystem in the Mekong River Delta into an irrigated ecosystem, and the development of very short duration rice varieties.

In 1981, Vietnam departed from the collective agricultural production system by introducing the group-oriented contract system of production. That was changed to individual contracts, beginning in 1986. The average farm size is very small. The number of farm households was estimated at 9.5 million in 1994, with 8.4 million having a size of less than 1 ha. By official estimates, the average small-farm household's share of income from the crops it harvests has risen from 20% before the 1986 reforms to around 60% in the mid-1990s.

Vietnam achieved an impressive growth in rice production after the policy reforms in 1986. Total output increased from 15.1 million t in 1987 to 32.6 million t in 2000, a growth of 6.1%/year. Much of the growth came from the expansion of the rice harvested area, as farmers shifted land from a long-duration single-cropped deepwater rice to double- and triple-cropped short-duration, high-yielding modern varieties, particularly in the south. There has also been an impressive growth in rice yield, from 2.70 t/ha in 1987 to 4.25 t/ha in 2000, a growth of 3.3%/year.
As a result of the spectacular growth in rice production, Vietnam has been a major rice exporter since 1989. Initially, it captured the international market for low-quality rice, but over time the milling quality has improved. Exports of milled rice have continuously increased from 1.4 million t in 1989 to 4.6 million t in 1999. Vietnam is now the second largest exporter of rice in the world market, after Thailand.



Rice environments
About 52% of Vietnam's rice is produced in the Mekong River Delta and another 18% in the Red River Delta. The other major rice-growing regions are the northeast and the north-central coast. The northern provinces of Vietnam have a total rice area of 2.5 million ha or about a third of the total rice planted area. Almost 85% of the total area is irrigated lowland, 12% is shallow rainfed, and 4% is intermediate rainfed. The dominant cropping pattern is spring-summer rice.

The Red River Delta, which is extremely densely settled and has very small landholdings, has long been practicing double rice cropping with highly labor intensive rice cultivation methods. The winter and spring season rice crops cover almost the same area (530,000 ha), with a yield of 5.2 and 5.7 t/ha, respectively.

The Mekong River Delta has three major cropping seasons: spring or early season, autumn or midseason, and winter, the long-duration wet-season crop. The largest rice area is cropped during the autumn season (1.95 million ha), followed by spring (1.45 million ha), and only a small area is cropped in winter (0.6 million ha). The rice yield is highest in the spring season (5.3 t/ha), and lowest in the winter season (3.3 t/ha). Farmers in this region adopt a direct-seeding method of crop establishment to save labor costs. Fifty-two percent of the rice in the Mekong River Delta is grown in irrigated lowlands, with the remaining 48% grown under rainfed conditions.

Soils in the Mekong River Delta are highly variable, but alluvial, acid-sulfate, and saline soils predominate. Acid-sulfate soils cover some 1.6 million ha, or 40% of the delta, mainly in the Plain of Reeds, Long Xuyen Quadrangle, and Ca Mau Peninsula. The soil is rich in humus and total N, but low in P. In addition, Al and Fe toxicities limit yield.

Alluvial soils, prevalent in 30% of the Mekong River Delta, are concentrated along the banks of the Tien (Mekong) and Hau (Bassac) rivers. This is the best soil in the delta, with humus content of 2%, total N of 0.1-0.25%, and medium P and K. Two to three crops can be grown on these soils each year.

Coastal saline soils occupy about 20% of the total area. The soils are rich in humus, N, and clay (55-60%), but have a high salt content.



Production constraints
The major constraints are flooding at the end of the rainy season and drought in the dry season.

Small farm size, a problem that is expected to increase even further because of population pressure, is a major constraint. The low and declining price of rice with the increase in rice harvest provides inadequate income for the sustenance of farming families. The low profitability in rice farming is a major disincentive to sustaining growth in productivity. Farmers have been trying to diversify into vegetables, fruit trees, and fish cultivation but without much success because of the lack of markets.

The current level of physical infrastructure is inadequate to support potential increases in agricultural production. Two-thirds of the farms have no access to drying areas; most of the crop is sun-dried. Storage space is about 1 million m 3 or 67% of the total needed. Transportation for moving the crop to market is inadequate. Energy is also in short supply. Although electricity is available in most provinces, most rural households do not have access to it.


Production opportunities
The increased production of rice and productivity of rice-based farming systems remain the country's primary goals. Studies in the Mekong River Delta have focused on various rice-based farming systems models: rice-fish integrated with fruit trees, rice-shrimp in saline areas, rice-fish in deepwater areas, and rice-cash crops in the remaining small amount of floating-rice area.



Resources : http://www.irri.org/science/cnyinfo/vietnam.asp