Livelihood Diversification of Tea Farmers In Thai Nguyen Province

Abstract

This study explored household livelihoods diversity tea farmers in Thai Nguyen through case studies in Dong Hy and Dai Tu district. The results of the study were analyzed from 378 farmers surveyed with two main types of farmer cultivation: Tea professional farmers (only tea cultivation) and tea unprofessional farmers (cultivation with rice, vegetables, fruit trees, livestock and forestry). The results indicateed the degree of livelihood diversification of tea farmers using the inverse Herfindahl - Hirschman index (IHHD) that there was no significant difference in the two study sites althouth livelihoods diversity of tea professional farmers were higher than that in tea unprofessional farmers. The results of multivariate regression analysis shown that there were 5 factors that was most correlated to the level of livelihood diversification, including access to capital, number of household members, number of household laborers, level of household head education and male household head. Two factors that were negatively correlated with livelihood diversification were tea cultivated area and cultivated type of tea.