Water

Country Water Action: Viet Nam
Poverty Reduction Gets a Boost in Bac Ninh
(March 2005)

By Neil O'Sullivan
JFPR Coordinator for the Poverty Reduction in Red River Basin Irrigation System Project

This year's spring rice season has stimulated an unusual level of interest and activity in many of the poorest communes of Bac Ninh Province. With support from a grant financed by the Japanese Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR), almost five thousand farming households have embarked on a campaign to lift their agricultural income. These households have recognized that their income will always hover around the poverty line unless rice yields can be lifted substantially.

As a first step in their campaign, the farmers decided to upgrade their agricultural knowledge and technique. With support from provincial experts, the farmers began attending training courses on each stage of rice production. Unlike the normal lecture-based approaches, this training involves 29 village demonstration sites covering a total of 125 hectares.

Already, in preparing nurseries for the current season, the women have learned to apply seed at the optimum rate, abandon their traditional use of urea in favor of organic phosphorous fertilizer. The old method of leaving their bag of seed rice in the pond has also been abandoned in favor of a simple but more scientific, leaching process and the women now know exactly the right growth stage at which to lift the seedlings.

The improved technology will also involve upgrading the quality of seed, increasing organic fertilizer rates and introducing integrated pest management. Through these changes, the farmers confidently expect to lift average crop yield by 30% (to 6.5 tonnes per hectare). To monitor their experiences, each of the farmers has started a logbook that will allow her to evaluate the costs and benefits of the new technology for next season.

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But for five communes in Gia Binh, Thuan Thanh and Luong Tai Districts, improving rice technology is just the first step in increasing farm incomes. Each of these communes has formed a Rural Development Support Committee (RDSC) to tackle more fundamental problems.

For the RDSCs, the priority task is to overhaul the dilapidated irrigation systems on which they have depended for decades. An early problem faced however, is the mismatch between funds available and the large number of canals and infrastructure to be renovated. To resolve this problem the RDSCs learned how to select options according to their poverty reduction impact. Using a simple formula, the farmers calculate the priority for each option based on how much it will cost, how many poor people will benefit and how much their incomes will increase.

For some farmers, particularly those from female-headed households, the small farm holding (average size of less than a quarter of a hectare) will never allow escape from poverty. For these households, the RDSC has investigated a large number of livelihood options. Village women's groups have finally selected sow breeding as the activity that will best allow them to maintain their household tasks while boosting their income. Detailed plans are now being finalized to train several hundred women in modern sow breeding technology. Each of the women has been selected from the poorest households in the 32 villages involved in the Rural Development Support (RDS) program.

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The RDS program represents a new approach by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to ensure genuine participation in rural development projects that it finances.

RDS is an innovative component of the $156.2 million Second Red River Basin Sector Project, supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) and the Netherlands Government. This project aims to sustainably increase rural incomes in the densely populated Red River Basin.

A major portion of the investment is earmarked for upgrading the aged irrigation infrastructure that typifies the region. An amount equivalent to 25% of the construction costs will be set aside for the RDS program. Through its RDS activities, the project hopes to ensure a high level of poverty reduction and a commitment to participatory irrigation management.

As well as focusing on Vietnam's highest priority of poverty reduction, the RDS program is also being implemented in a manner that gives practical support to the Government's decentralization and village democracy policies. RDS committees are based on elections held in village meetings of poor households. Provided they meet simple guidelines and help boost farm incomes, the use of the investment funds will be decided entirely at Commune level by the RDSC itself. Women too are given special emphasis under the RDS program and at least half of those elected to the RDSC must be women.