Impact of Production Privatization on Onfarm Water Management in the Red River Delta, North Vietnam.

Abstract

In the transition to a market economy, in the rural Vietnam areas, the right to conduct production subjectively has been returned from cooperatives to the farm households. This individualization motivates the farmers to carry out their farming practices effectively. However, onfarm water management, because of physical interdependency among the farmers, can hardly be effectively carried out without cooperation of all the interdependent farmers. This paper, based on case studies of the main types of onfarm water management prevailing in the Red River Delta, analyses the changes in onfarm water management in the transition. It is found that, while the farmers carry out farming practices individually, the diminishing of the cooperative's role in onfarm water management is the main cause of the onfarm facilities' damages and unreliability of water supply to downstream area. The downstream farmers, depending on the changes in the role of cooperative in water management, take different countermeasures. In the best cases where the cooperatives can mobilize resources for a supplemental water supply, the farmers have to spend much more money and labour than the upstream farmers. In the other cases, they could not do anything other than to suffer from water shortage and delay water fee payment. The equity policy in water distribution and cost payment would enable the downstream farmers to invest in water recycling, thus increasing the system's efficiency. The integration at the village level of hamlet traditional organizations would be an effective body for onfarm water management.