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agricultural production system by introducing the individual-oriented contract
system of production. In its initial form, the contract system restored the farm family
as the basic production unit, while retaining compulsory production and
procurement targets. However, it failed to provide security of tenure and market
freedom. These deficiencies were corrected in April 1988 by Resolution No. 10,
which liberalized all input and output markets and allowed households to maximize
their own output and incomes.
Agricultural production systems
Indochina is an important rice-growing region in Asia. Almost 8 million ha of rice
are harvested annually. Vietnam ranks first in terms of both area (5.66 million ha)
and yield (2.7 t/ha). Lao PDR has 679,269 ha of rice with an average yield of about
2 t/ha. Cambodia, with an estimated yield of 1.1 t/ha from about 1.4 million ha, has
the lowest rice yield in Asia.
Rice dominates agriculture ill Indochina in terms of the number of people
employed in cultivation, the area grown, and volun~e of production. In Cambodia,
95% of the population makes its living from agriculture and 93% of the total
cropped area is planted to rice. In Lao PDR, only 740,000 ha or 3.2% of the total
area is cultivated. Therefore, the land-people ratio is at a low (0.2 ha/person). The
rice area is about 86% of the total cropped area. In the Mekong River Delta in
Vietnam, rice is the predominant crop (97.5%). The northern provinces of Vietnam
have a total rice area of 2,391,000 ha or about 74% of the total area of farm
holdings, which makes rice the most dominant crop.
Rice farming systems
Cambodia has four rice farming systems based on the degree of water control:
rainfed lowland (including supplementary irrigated), upland, deepwater (floating),
and dry season irrigated rice. About 80% of the rice area is grown in the rainfed
lowland (Table 2). An almost equal proportion of floating and dry season irrigated
rice is grown. Rainfed lowland is further classified into high, medium, and low fields,
which are grown with early- (90-120 d), medium- (120-150 d), and late-maturing
(> 150 d) rice varieties (Cambodia-IRRI Project 1990a,b).
The main cropping system in L20 PDR is based on a single wet season rice
crop. Almost 60% of the total rice area is rainfed lowland; about 39% is planted
under upland conditions and contributes about 25% of total rice production (Lao
PDR-IRRI 1990). Traditional photosensitive varieties are widely grown and because
of their long duration (140-180 d), there is little opportunity to grow subsidiary crops
either before or after the rice crop.
Compared with Cambodia and Lao PDR, Vietnam has more developed
infrastructure. In the northern provinces, 84% of the total area is irrigated lowland,
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