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Land accumulation and dealing with consequences (18/11)
19/11/2012 - 17 Lượt xem
Land accumulation is said to be the
basic way to improve agricultural productivity, income and to boost
exports of agricultural products in a sustainable way.
Vietnam
has 14.5 million farmer households, with nearly 70 million plots of
field. The sizes of these plots of field vary and are generally small.
Land dispersion in the north is more popular than in the south.
There
are many documents referring to the disadvantage of land fragmentation.
Land scatter hinders agricultural modernization; reduces the efficiency
of resource use because people cannot take advantage of the economics
of scale; increases production and marketing costs; makes it difficult
for farmers to coordinate production with scattered plots of field;
increases social costs in promoting land concentration. Land
fragmentation also causes land waste for the building of field edge
paths; wastes time for moving between field plots; and causes
difficulties in shipping products.
There
are many references that mention the benefits of concentration of land,
including the ability to increase productivity through mechanization,
labor productivity through the effective organization and monitoring of
production, optimizing fixed capital; to reduce input costs per unit
average (seed, fertilizer, etc.); and to increase transport efficiency.
The concentration of land
also allows local governments to easily improve infrastructure for
agriculture that have not been done previously because field plots were
too small. The final advantage of land concentration is the large-scale
production allowing the application of modern technology.
It
should be noted that the disadvantages of land fragmentation and the
benefits of land accumulation are related to financial and
administrative aspects. We often ignore the views of farmers when it
comes to this issue.
Why do
farmers not realize the ineffectiveness and the cost of land
fragmentation, and why do they not voluntarily reorganize their land?
What prevents farmers who do small-scale production in the world from
joining their neighbors to accumulate land to significantly reduce
production costs and other expenses?
The
short answer is land scatter does not seem to be a serious problem for
farmers in Vietnam as well as in other countries who apply the model of
small-scale agricultural production.
If
the land is considered the basic properties of farmers, but farmers
still persevere with land scatter, it means they still see the key
benefits of land scatter in fact.
Part
of a more complete answer to this problem is to land accumulation is
only an advantage for farmers who have a lot of land (or groups of
farmers participating in cooperatives), and have the financial ability
to mechanize production.
Lack
of capital to expand fields and implement mechanization are the causes
for farmers who do small-scale production believe that land scatter is
appropriate to their ability in increasing production, income and
wealth with the set conditions for different soil quality, availability
of resources other than land and limited tolerance to risk.
The
third part of the answer is for farmers who apply small-scale
production, the cost spent for unilateral efforts to accumulate land
exceeds the benefits that they can gain in the future.
For
farmer households, land fragmentation has many advantages. It helps
level risks, allows access to land with many different farming
characteristics (slope, orientation, location, type, fertility); allows
product diversification; allows resources (especially labor) are
distributed efficiently over time and activities; enhances the
liquidity of land assets.
Although
farmers can allocate land and resources in accordance with their
circumstances, they can still be poor and face food insecurity.
Problems arise from the lack of productive resources such as capital
(including land), human resources, finance and necessary information.
Thus, the lack of resources affects the welfare of rural households and
impedes the development of the rural rather than land dispersion.
In
Vietnam, land dispersion is derived from poverty (farmers could not
afford to buy more fields), social pressure (After cooperatives were
dissolved, land was distributed equally among the members of villages),
and by cultivation methods (farmers choose to work on multiple plots of
field to diversify production and reduce risk). The degree of land
dispersion is also affected by the population pressure. Arable land per
capita in Vietnam is only a little more than 1,000m2. This is one of
the lowest numbers in the world.
Although
land dispersion is detrimental to production, it does not highly affect
soil productivity and this has been observed worldwide. Despite the
high degree of land dispersion and fragmentation, agricultural land
productivity and total production (rice, corn, livestock) of Vietnam
have been increasing significantly.
However,
the average income of farmers has increased relatively slow or not
increased despite the aforementioned improvements. This is not related
to the reorganization of land. Instead, the problem is that farmers
generally cannot afford to finance additional production inputs,
including land. Land accumulation for a country that is shortage of
land as Vietnam cannot help farmers have more land.
Senior
officials have tried to encourage the reduction of land scatter. The
demand for land concentration has been raised and there are suggestions
for action. Former Minister of Natural Resources and Environment said:
"We will not be able to develop large-scale agricultural production
with high competitiveness in the international economic integration
process if we continue with small agricultural production. That is why
the Party and Government urge land concentration."
This
has been confirmed in a press release on November 2008: "At the
November meeting of the Government, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung
confirmed: the Land Law will be amended to promote land concentration.
The Budget Law will be also amended to increase investment in
agricultural production, and farmer and rural development."
The
common logic that we see in most of the field trips to provinces is
that only big and well-organized landowners (including individuals,
cooperatives, corporations) can have access to capital to implement
mechanization. Other officials have argued that land concentration is
necessary for widespread adoption of agro-processing technology and the
commercialization of agriculture. Land concentration is also seen as a
solution to increase employment.
Despite
the emphasis on this issue, the government remains cautious. In the
second half of the 1990s the government began to encourage voluntarily
land accumulation to improve production efficiency. The Government
avoids using administrative measures to force land concentration. To
successfully implement land accumulation, three tasks must be done.
Firstly, land must be concentrated, for example, the scattered fields
must be been combined in a certain order. Secondly, field scale should
be increased. Thirdly, farm households and farmers whose fields are
acquired must have resettlement areas and new sources of income.
While
the first two tasks are relatively easy for implementation by
administrative measures (particularly through land recovery by the
State), the third task will be much harder. Lands concentration,
expanding production scale can have advantages in improving
productivity, increasing exports. The downside of it is large numbers
of farmers will lose land and they will have to struggle to adapt to
new circumstances. More importantly, many farmers who have no land do
not want to leave farming. In any form, lives and welfare of farmers
who lose land will be also affected.
Because
of these reasons, in Vietnam, the question is not whether land
concentration is correct or not, but how to handle the social,
economic, political consequences of programs of coercive concentration
of land and expand production scale.
Such
programs have to face questions like: Who will decide which land should
be concentrated? Which criteria should be used? Who will benefit from
this process and how? Who will lose and how much loss? How much more
the government should compensate for farmers, especially those who lose
all of their fields (life-changing and livelihood loss) to achieve the
national target of increasing production, export expansion and
modernization agriculture?
As
being mentioned above, the Government has always been careful to avoid
forcing the concentration of land through administrative measures. Some
districts have been very successful in mobilizing people to voluntarily
participate in land concentration to support mechanization or convert
to pig and poultry farming. The support from the government for farms
is pretty well. The objective is "proving economic efficiency, creating
hundreds of thousands of jobs and making the most of land area and
water surface, and contributing significantly to the country's
integration process."
Data
of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development shows that by
mid-2009, there were 150,102 farms across the country with an average
area of 6 hectares. This number has increased to nearly 8,600 a year
from 2000, and these farms employed approximately 510,000 employees in
2009.
The World Bank’s
analysis shows that when the expansion of land use rights in different
legal documents has assisted land redistribution. The ability to hire,
sell and/or transfer the land use right has helped farmers who operate
least effectively sell their land or get out of agriculture. This
allows farmers with higher production effectiveness to expand land and
promote large-scale production. These changes are still modest but they
have made certain impacts. One of them is the area of agricultural land
per capita increases to over 1ha.
This
positive development can only continue when the rest of the economy
expands accordingly. Economic growth allows workers to have the
opportunity to move out of the agricultural sector and create more
primary resources in the agricultural sector to invest to increase
productivity. Data analysis shows that the two processes are going on
the right route in Vietnam.
Policy
implication is that even without administrative intervention, but there
are a lot of positive adjustment in land concentration has taken place.
Currently, agricultural production and exports continue to grow thanks
to farmers adjusting production mode, switching to more profitable
activities, improving farming and land management skills, making good
use of information and opportunities on the market. This allows farmers
rationalize the existing land area through voluntary land concentration
and under market signals. The government should continue to support
this trend.
Source: VietnamNet.
