Challenges to Rural Poverty Reduction in Viet Nam - Oxfam Blogs

Five-year Synthesis Report
Part 2: Challenges to Rural Poverty Reduction in Viet Nam
an increase of 20-30% over 2010 (70-80,000 VND/day). Unfortunately, local casual jobs
are few and unstable. Ede women in Cu Hue-Dak Lak make use of their leisure time by
doing low paid (about 20-30,000 VND/day) casual work such as peeling cashew nuts.
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Reducing intensive pig farming. High prices for piglets and feed, volatile prices for
live pork and frequent epidemics and disease has forced a reduction in intensive pig
farming. In Cu Hue-Dak Lak for instance, the number of pigs farmed fell from 8,000 to
5,000 between 2010 and 2011. In many mountainous areas farmers began to breed
local pigs (“black pigs”) rather than hybrid pigs (“white pigs”). Extensive local breed pig
farming can make use of locally available products such as maize and cassava without
the need for expensive commercial feeds. Local pigs grow slowly but can be sold at
higher prices than hybrid pigs. In Duc Huong-Ha Tinh, some households have shifted
over to raise dogs as puppy breeders instead of pigs.
Farmers sometimes react too quickly to changing prices. Farmers tend to expand
the production of crops with rising prices such as cassava, coffee and pepper. In Cu
Hue-Dak Lak, for example, following a year on year increase of 40% in the price of
cassava at the beginning of 2011 many Ede households grew more cassava. However,
once the price fell in the middle of 2011 many farmers found themselves in financial
difficulty. This is a common problem across the monitoring sites, and as well as financial
losses results in inefficiency of land use.
To reduce costs in the face of rising prices people exchange labour (such as in
cassava harvesting in Xy-Quang Tri, in rice harvesting in Thuan Hoa-Ha Giang and Phuoc
Dai-Ninh Thuan, tea tending and harvesting in Ban Lien-Lao Cai...), and share transport
(in Cu Hue-Dak Lak, Ede villagers are travelling to upland fields).
Price rises have increased awareness of the importance of quality. Traders are
now more demanding. In Xy-Quang Tri, the practise of labour exchange helped farmers
harvest their cassava quickly in order to prevent a reduction in the quality of starch.
Similarly, in Ban Lien-Lao Cai, labour exchange in harvesting tea in time to achieve
the standard of “1 bud 2 leaves”. In Cu Hue-Dak Lak, farmers are more aware of the
importance of harvesting ripe coffee beans and processing maize so that it is cleaner
and drier and so commands a higher price.
Impacts on consumption
The common coping measure of the poor is saving expenses in the context of
inflation. Changes in consumption at the monitoring points in 2011 are as follows:
Rice. Rice is important to household life. Although the price of rice increased in 2011,
few households were short of rice .
Where farmers face difficult conditions (Luong Minh-Nghe An, Xy-Quang Tri, Phuoc Dai
and Phuoc Thanh-Ninh Thuan), the poor tend to be short of food in immediately prior to
harvests. Following the rise in the price of rice local residents purchased poor quality
rice, borrowed money from shops, gathered bamboo shoots and firewood for sale or
took waged employment. Some poor households mixed rice with cassava and maize for
their meals.
Meat, fish. All of the poor at the monitoring points consumed less meat and fish, turning
nstead to cheaper protein foods such as eggs, soy bean curds and dried fish. In some
communes, poor households added to their food sources by trapping wild animals in
forests or fishing in rivers and streams.