The impact of an adjusted cropping calendar on the welfare of rice farming households in the Mekong River Delta, Vietnam

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of credit rationing on the amount of capital allocated to inputs used by rice farmers in the Mekong River Delta (MRD).Design/methodology/approachBased on the literature review, the authors propose nine hypotheses on the determinants of access of rice farmers to credit and four hypotheses on the impact of credit rationing on the amount of capital allocated to inputs used by rice farmers in the MRD. Data were collected from 1,168 farmer households randomly selected out of 10 provinces (city) in the MRD.FindingsStep 1 of propensity score matching (PSM) with probit regression shows that land value, income, education, gender of household head and geographical distance to the nearest credit institution affect the degree of credit rationing facing rice farmers. Step 2 of PSM estimator identifies that the amount of capital allocated to inputs such as fertilizer and hired labour increases when credit rationing decreases while that allocated to seed and pesticide is not influenced by credit rationing because rice farmers use these inputs adamantly regardless of effectiveness.Originality/valueThis paper sheds light on the impact of credit rationing on the amount of capital allocated to inputs used by rice farmers, which is largely different from the main focus of the extant literature just on the determinants of credit rationing facing farmers in general and rice farmers in particular.

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Livelihood impacts of water policy changes: evidence from a coastal area of the Mekong river delta

Water Policy ◽

10.2166/wp.2003.0030 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 5 (5-6) ◽

pp. 475-488 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

C.T. Hoanh ◽

T.P. Tuong ◽

K.M. Gallop ◽

J.W. Gowing ◽

S.P. Kam ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Water Policy ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Extended Period ◽

River Delta ◽

Mekong River ◽

Policy And Practice ◽

Mekong River Delta ◽

Balanced Development ◽

The Government ◽

The Impact

The coastal zone of the Mekong river delta has experienced rapid economic and environmental changes during the last decade. Given the nature of the environment and the level of dependence on the natural resources base, policies for land and water were very influential in this process. The emphasis on rice created an imperative to control saline intrusion, which was realized through the construction of major engineering works over an extended period (1994-2000). The inertia built up by this process led to a divergence between policy and practice, and adversely affected the livelihoods of fishers and of those farmers who live on aquaculture. This prompted the government to rethink the rice-focus policy, in favor of a land and water policy for balanced rice and aquaculture production. This paper describes an analytical process, which was adopted to explore the feasibility of adopting the new policy for the balanced development of both rice and shrimp production and discusses the impact of the new policy on farmers’ livelihoods.

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Evaluation of Sustainable Rice Farming Systems in the Mekong River Delta

10.1007/978-3-030-42462-6_113 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 695-717

Author(s):

Tien Dung Khong ◽

Adam Loch

Keyword(s):

Farming Systems ◽

River Delta ◽

Mekong River ◽

Rice Farming ◽

Mekong River Delta

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Evaluation of Sustainable Rice Farming Systems in the Mekong River Delta

The Palgrave Handbook of Climate Resilient Societies ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-32811-5_113-1 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-23

Author(s):

Tien Dung Khong ◽

Adam Loch

Keyword(s):

Farming Systems ◽

River Delta ◽

Mekong River ◽

Rice Farming ◽

Mekong River Delta

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Identifying Alternative Wetting and Drying Adoption (AWD) in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta: A Change Detection Approach

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information ◽

10.3390/ijgi8070312 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (7) ◽

pp. 312 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Robin J. Lovell

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Change Detection ◽

Radar Data ◽

River Delta ◽

Mekong River ◽

Series Data ◽

Wetting And Drying ◽

Mekong River Delta ◽

The Impact

Alternative wetting and drying (AWD) is an increasingly popular water-saving practice in rice production in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta, especially considering the impact of projected climate change and reduced water availability. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to determine adoption without deploying thousands of costly household surveys. This research used European Space Agency Sentinel-1a and 1b radar data, combined with in-situ moisture readings, to determine AWD adoption through change detection of a time series wetness index (WI). By using a beta coefficient of the radar data, the WI avoided the pitfalls of cloud cover, surface roughness, and vegetative interference that arise from the sigma coefficient data. The analysis illustrated an AWD adoption likelihood scale across the delta and it showed potential for the use of remotely sensed data to detect adoption. Trends across the Vietnamese delta showed higher adoption rates inland, with lower adoption of AWD in the coastal provinces. These results were supported by a simultaneous effort to collect household level adoption data as part of the same project. However, correlation between the WI values and in situ soil moisture meter readings were most accurate in alluvial soils, illustrating a particularly strong relationship between soil type and WI model robustness. The research suggests that future change detection efforts should focus on retrieving a multi-season dataset and employing a power density analysis on the time series data to fully understand the periodicity of dry down patterns.

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