With the industrial parks’ investors failing to make progress on infrastructure development on the huge areas of paddy land in the Mekong Delta that have been cleared for their numerous establishments, many local farmers are now making use of the deserted sites as paddy fields.
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| A farmer tending his crop inside the Soc Trang-based An Hiep Industrial Park Photo: Tuoi Tre |
The country’s largest granary, the Mekong Delta accounts for 90 percent of the annual total rice export volumes, but paddy land areas have increasingly decreased over the last few years, with haphazard investments of industrial parks (IP) around the delta.
Local farmers have leased plots of land that have been left abandoned for years inside the IPs to start their crops.
For instance, Nguyen Van Dung, a farmer from Hau Giang Province, said he and many other farmers are now tending dozens of hectares of rice and other crops inside the Song Hau Industrial Park in Chau Thanh District.
The IP completed site clearance in 2007, but no construction has ever begun, leaving most of the 340-ha area covered with grass.
“I have been waiting for so long, but have seen no plants ever be built in the zone,” said Dung.
Although Dung has granted his land plot to the establishment of the IP, and received compensation, he has now returned to the site to start his crops again.
Meanwhile, Ha Van Tuan, another local farmer, said he also wanted to tend his paddy inside the IP.
“But it will require a large sum of money to clear the weeds and grass on the site,” said Tuan.
“In this IP, you can grow as large an area as you wish, as long as you can afford the expense of grass clearing.”
Similarly, local authorities of Soc Trang Province in 2007 also cleared 180-ha of paddy land at Soc Trang city to give place to the An Hiep IP. Despite the considerably developed infrastructure, two thirds of the park area still remains deserted after five years.
Local farmers have thus demanded to lease the plots and restart their agricultural production.
“It was too wasteful leaving such fertile land deserted,” said Nguyen Van Phuoc, a farmer who has been running a 100-ha farm to grow watermelon, rice, and sweet potatoes in An Hiep IP over the last two years.
The largest benefit of growing rice inside the IP is that it can keep local authorities away from the reputation of wasting land, and local farmers whose lands have been reclaimed and cleared can now earn their livelihood by working on his farm, he said.
Around 100 farmers work on his farm, each earning VND100,000 a day.
Other causes for paddy-land loss
Many farmers have also converted the purpose of their land through their
own initiative, contributing to the rapid decline of paddy land over
the last few years.
Ho Quang Cua, deputy head of Soc Trang Department of Agriculture and
Rural Development, said 250,000 hectares of fertile paddy land in the
coastal areas in Mekong Delta have been converted into ponds for raising
shrimps.
“In the years to come, under the ‘new rural areas’ policy, much land
intended for rice crops will also have to give way to the construction
of roads, urban areas, and industrial clusters,” said Cua.
In Tien Giang and Dong Thap provinces, farmers have also converted their rice fields into orchards, local authorities said.
Authorities can not prevent or ban farmers from doing so, due to the lack of penalty measures, they said.
Nguyen Van Sanh, head of the Mekong Delta Research and Development
Institute, said there is a paradox that any provinces growing rice will
be considered a “poor province,” and thus local farmers of that province
are also considered poor.
This has lead to the fact that localities have scrambled to industrialise, he said.
“Moreover, rice farmers cannot earn as much of a profitas those
cultivating fruits or seafood, so we cannot force them to keep on
tending their paddies .”
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