When will Vietnamese
farmers escape the sorrow of poverty?
A farmer
harvests rice in a field in a suburb of
The media has reported about nine families in Long An Province asking to be imprisoned because they are broke after last sugarcane season.
They said being in
jail is better than starving after their lands are auctioned to repay their
debts.
In 2011 they had
mortgaged their lands to rent 300 hectares (740 acres) of land in Ben Luc
District to grow sugarcane. But floods destroyed their crops repeatedly,
rendering them completely broke.
It is rare for
farmers to ask to be jailed, but much less rare for Vietnamese farmers to be
broke.
Many
A few months later
things went from apparent bust to boom as farmers, hoping to capitalize on
the panic buying, grew vast quantities of short-term rice.
HCMC then
witnessed long lines of trucks with rice from the delta parked randomly on
the roadside to sell at low prices.
It was the result
of panic sparked by rumors and poor export policies.
When global demand
was high, the government allowed limited exports, fearful of food security. A
fall in demand coincided with the harvest season in
I almost cry
whenever I remember the story.
In the previous
two seasons, after the prices of the IR 50404 rice variety - a short-term,
low-quality variety - shot up, middlemen went to the fields and offered
farmers prices equal to that of high-quality varieties.
Farmers cultivated
50404 despite the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s warning not
to do so because they saw some reaping nice profits from growing it
regularly.
Exporters too
profited.
But suddenly the
government limited exports saying it was waiting for a further increase in
50404 prices.
Then, one day,
there was no more demand for the low-priced rice from
It hurt to see
Mekong Delta farmers riding their motorbikes for hundreds of kilometers to
find the new variety and waiting on fields to buy it for cultivating on their
lands.
People competed to
buy jasmine rice, buying even unripe grains. Some took off their shirts to
wrap sheaves of rice, fearful of losing some of them.
I cried.
The story is but
one example.
It is not unusual
for the media to report about saddened prawn farmers sitting in their farms
for days after their animals died, others giving away huge amounts of fruits
to feed livestock because they cannot sell them, and vegetable growers
selling a tricycle full for a few thousands of dongs.
Why do Vietnamese
farmers face this kind of sorrow? Because they are the first link in the
production – consumption chain that consists of dozens of other links.
These links
promote the trade, but also pocket most of the profits. The farmers have to
depend on them because they have no other choice. That is the tragedy of
Vietnamese farmers.
Farmers have to
put up with a multitude of official agencies, most of whom merely collect
taxes and fees and do not help them improve farming technologies or produce
or seek to expand the market.
Without being
aware of the market, lacking resources, and cultivating without any strategy,
they are caught in a cycle of changing crops.
While authorities
have taken certain actions like setting up linkages between the government,
scientists and farmers, traders and banks, there is a distance between the
planner’s office and the field, and farmers have had to struggle on their
own.
Unlike in
developed countries,
After dozens of
years, a plan to sell farmers insurance remains in trial mode.
So farmers
struggle on their own to cope; they survive, but face extreme hardship.
As for the
sugarcane farmers in Long An, their children have had to drop out of school
or quit their jobs to return home and see if they can do something with their
lands.
But with the huge
debt, it is easy to foresee a scenario of poverty for these uneducated people
who no chance to improve their lives.
A solution can be
a total scrapping of the bureaucratic government mechanisms which place a
burden on farmers, putting an end to unrealistic theories and leaving farmers
to the market.
There should be a
playing field with a win-win collaboration between companies and farmers.
Vietnamese farmers
can learn from their peers in
By Hoang Hai Lam*
* The writer is a freelancer who lives and works in
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Chủ Nhật, 26 tháng 1, 2014
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