Six of the seven farmers who stopped producing rice are from Cho Moi, the poorer of the two districts. The farmers who stopped producing rice entirely all have very small land sizes, well under one hectare. This is much below the average land size for the region. They give varying explanations why they thought the change would benefit them. Firstly, income from vegetables and other crops is more spread out over the year than rice, which is harvested at one specific time. A variety of crops leads to fewer cash flow gaps. Farmers in the study nearly all sell to many small traders, often to river boats which pass along the Mekong tributaries. Only very large farms are able to sell outside the province. Farmers are therefore dependent on local prices. With rice, prices are always lower at those times of the year when the supply is greater. Also, small-scale farmers have very limited ability to store rice, and are therefore disadvantaged.
The low profitability in rice farming, particularly at the times of the year when rice is harvested, is a major disincentive to rice production. Moreover, there is a general perception among farmers in the area that small rice farmers will have increasing difficulties in the coming years. In the survey and interviews, farmers frequently expressed a very low opinion of the future of rice production. They perceive a great future threat of competition from high quality Thai rice as a result of liberalisation, and have little faith in their ability to improve the quality of their rice. Regardless of their education, most farmers were aware that they were unable to produce high-quality rice. In fact, some of the richer farmers in the study preferred not to eat their own rice because of this. One of the farmers mentioned that he was concerned about the rat droppings that got into the rice he produced while it was being dried on the road tarmac. As he did not like to eat his own rice for that reason, he bought Thai imported rice for his own consumption.
While few of the poorer farmers would have been likely to buy imported rice rather than eat the rice they themselves produced, nearly all farmers expressed low opinions about rice-growing as a livelihood. Of farmers who had children, 68.9% said they hoped that their children would not become farmers when they grew up.
Table 15: Reasons, according to interviewee, why his / her children won't become farmers when they are adults
Children won't farm because: Percentage
They will find better work 83.9%
They are not interested 16.1%
‘They are girls’ 18.6%
They are incapable of farm work 12.8%
When asked why this was the case, nearly all farmers first mentioned that they hoped or assume that their child would be able to find better work. As one farmer expressed it succinctly “Rice farming is long days of hard work and little money”. Others mentioned that a company job would be a more reliable source of income. According to some farmers, the children themselves also did not want to be farmers when they grew up, and some farmers said that “their children were incapable of farm work”. Both answers suggest that it is not only parents who would prefer their children to have off-farm futures; it was also the children themselves – the incapability signalled by parents might be an indirect way of saying the children are choosing not to develop farming skills. There was a general perception that while it was not desirable for sons to become rice farmers, it would be even worse for daughters, and 16 farmers split between both districts said their children would not grow up to be farmers because they were girls. In interviews, several farmers said that if they had more money, they would like their wives to stop farming and have a little shop instead. According to a female Vietnamese NGO worker, there was a general perception that having women working on farms was a sign of poverty, even though simple observation shows that many women do continue to work in the fields. The social stigma associated with women doing farm work could explain why farmers had a preference for their wives and daughters not to work on the fields. On the
whole, the impression seemed to be that there were better jobs than farming, and that rice farming would be a poor outlook for the next generation.
Naturally, the reasons given represent only the parents’ thoughts. The young people themselves might have well had a different view.
Table 16: Farmers' predictions about what might happen to their agricultural land over the next decade
What will happen to your agricultural land over the next 5-10 years?
Will be rented out 37%
Nothing will change 34%
Children will farm it 25%
Will become urbanised 9%
Will be sold 6%
Will hire outside labour to work on it 5%
Will be turned into garden land 3%
Will be turned into a fish farm 1%
Child will own it but not farm it 1%
Will be turned into a fruit farm 1%
Table 16 shows what farmers thought might happen to their land within five to ten years. Farmers were allowed to give up to three possibilities, but only 30 (out of 150) farmers gave more than one option, and only 3 people gave three options. The urbanisation of farmland was only given as a second or third option. In other words, farmers who lived close enough to a town or city to suspect that their land-use permit might be revoked to allow for urban expansion also gave other possibilities in case this would not occur. On the whole, this table supports the picture of farming as a non-desirable
occupation for a substantial proportion of farmers. Almost 40% of the farmers surveyed intended to rent out their farms within the next ten years and stop farming themselves. A smaller group thought about either selling their land or getting others to work on it instead of them. The remaining farmers had a variety of plans, such as changing their land into a garden or into a fruit or fish farm.