Land Holding Changes and Kinh and Khmer Farmers' Livelihoods in Thoi Thuan B Hamlet, Thoi Lai Town, Co Do District, Can Tho City, Vietnam

Nguyen Quang Tuyen

doi:10.5539/ass.v6n1p132

Abstract

Prior to 1975 the Saigon regime in Vietnam implemented land reforms in the form of private property rights. After 1975, land reform based on an egalitarian approach to land distribution for every household member eliminated both large scale land holdings and landless people. However, land redistribution and the establishment of agricultural cooperatives in South Vietnam was not as effective as the Government would have liked. It is said that methodological shortcomings and the inexperience of the State in implementing agrarian transformation led to the failure of this reform. Since the introduction of the 1993 Land Law and neo-liberalist policies, land has effectively become a commodity distributed through market mechanisms. Therefore, land can now be bought and sold by and to anybody. Commoditization of the land has increased the gap between the rich and the poor. In fact, the neo-liberalist ideology focuses on effectiveness and efficiency but not social security, because the Land Law reforms have introduced competitive power relations and an insecurity of land tenure. Some poor farmers do not have enough capital to invest effectively in agricultural production, leading to the sale of their land and them becoming landless. Therefore, in order to survive, wealthy, medium and poor farmers, as well as landless people, have had to diversify their livelihoods through a combination of on-farm, off-farm and non-farm activities.

Highlights

Prior to 1975 the Saigon regime in Vietnam implemented land reforms in the form of private property rights
In order to understand how the farmers’ land holdings and their livelihoods have changed since the introduction of the State’s Doi Moi policy, those land holdings and livelihoods introduced by the Saigon regime and during the reunification of the country after the American-Vietnam war will be revealed
Poor farm households stand at only 27 percent, but the poor landless households make up 45 percent of all households

Summary

Introduction

Prior to 1975 the Saigon regime in Vietnam implemented land reforms in the form of private property rights. Land holdings and the lives of the farmers in the Mekong Delta have been affected by the land reforms taking place prior to and since 1975 The impacts of these policies are reflected in the land holding situation at my local research site. In Thoi Lai town, I selected Thoi Thuan B hamlet to be my research site, because this hamlet contains a large area of agricultural land affected by the 1993 Land Law, with a greater amount of diversification in occupations (which include farming, small industrial and business enterprises, and service businesses), a greater number of Khmer and poorer people, and more complex social relations and networking taking place than in the other hamlets in Thoi Lai town

Methods

Results

Conclusion