Political economy of farm fragmentation in Vietnam

The average number of non-contiguous plots held by a single farm household in the Red River delta is 7-8. In the Mekong delta the number is only 2. So fragmentation, if it is a problem, is a northern problem, especially when you consider that many of these plots are only 200 or 500 square metres (for non-metric readers, 500 m2 is about 1/8 acres). Average total farm size in the RR delta is 2,500 m2 and in the Mekong delta it is 1.2 ha.

Fragmentation has disadvantages - chiefly that you lose land on account of the numerous boundaries (wet rice fields are usually surrounded by a small bund). you sometimes have to travel longish distances between plots, adding to your workload, and it is non-conducive to the use of farm machinery and some other new technologies. The advantages are that poor farmers can minimize risk by growing different crops on different plots - one of the reasons for fragmentation is that distribution was carried out in such a way as to equalize access to different soil types. So basically each household has access to some fairly good flat rice land and some other soil qualities (for example, hillside, flood-prone, rocky, near the road, far from the road, sandy, etc - whatever the locality happens to have).

Under the 1993 Land Law, households were given use rights to these plots. Each household was assigned an area of land based on the number of people in it. The land can be transferred (a euphemism for 'sold'), inherited, mortgaged, rented in or out, during the lifetime of the household's tenure (20 years for annual crop land, 50 years for perennial crop land). The state retains ownership of the land and has the right to redistribute plots upon the expiry of tenure (this is an ancient Vietnamese tradition). Periodic redistribution is necessitated, either for egalitarian reasons or in order to maintain social peace, by the fact that, over time, many people become landless. People born since the first distribution in 1993, for example, and women who marry into a village were not in the headcount at the time the land was distributed. On the other hand, people die or move away and those who inherit their land tend to have more than the rest.

Interestingly, according to a study I read yesterday,* these tiny fragmented farms are no less productive than larger farms. The only significant difference between these and the larger farms is that they absorb a lot more labour. If more people move out of farming so that labour to work these plots becomes scarce, then they will certainly become a lot less productive. As it is, many of these workers are underemployed for much of the year. There isn't a huge amount to do a lot of the time, but the demand for labour is round-the-clock at peak times like harvest.

The government has a policy of land consolidation. This was in fact one of the basic rationales for collectivization in the first place - the idea that working larger plots of land would be more efficient. Households are encouraged to swap plots in order to increase the size of individual plots. The process is fraught with difficulty, however, and not a lot has happened. Farmers find, for now, that fragmentation is more advantageous than disadvantageous. It encourages crop diversification and risk reduction. But there's also a major political problem related to who is going to get the lion's share of the good land and whether some families are going to end up growing less profitable rice, while others have more profitable cash crops. On the other hand, fragmentation discourages entrepreneurship (read emergence of capitalist farmers).

Women, as usual, get the worst end of the stick. This is not mentioned in the paper I read. But each household is supposed to have a Red Book detailing the plots of land allocated to it. The law says that the two names of husband and wife should be registered as owners of the usufruct. This is a socialist ideal that is out of sync with village reality. Mostly only husbands have their names in the Red Book. The reason is that Vietnam is traditionally patrilocal and patrilineal. Women move into their husband's family's household and land when they marry. If a couple become farmers, it is very often on land given to the son by his parents. If the son meets with an accident, or gets divorced, there is no way those parents want the land becoming the property of their daughter-in-law! Back in her home village, the wife's family was allocated some land in 1993, but since she has left the village and cannot farm there, the land remains under the control of her father.

This is why divorce in the rural areas is extremely rare. A woman who initiates a divorce is likely to end up with nothing. She'll be thrown off her in-laws' land and, even if she goes home she's unlikely to be welcome as her brothers and their families will have taken over the farming of her share of the land.

One last point about the lack of entrepreneurship. While it prevents the development of capitalist agriculture in the normal sense of emerging family-based businesses run for profit (as distinct from farming for subsistence), it does not prevent the emergence of capitalism in agriculture. Fragmentation makes land consolidation difficult, so it encourages the intensive application of labour to the fields. But this self-exploitation by the labourers is actually highly productive. Enough is produced that a portion of the crop may be sold to the market. The market, however, is monopsonistic - meaning that there are few buyers, mainly state-owned trading companies, and prices paid to farmers are low, while profit margins of the traders are high. In other words, the instensive labour of the farmers (notably the women) is lining the pockets of urban trading companies.

*Pham Van Hung, T. Gordon MacAulay and Sally P. Marsh, 'The Economics of Land Fragmentation in the North of Vietnam', 48th Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, Melbourne, February 2004.

The murder in Amsterdam

Here is some information about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, scriptwriter for the film Sumbission. The director of the film was Theo Van Gogh who was murdered in Amsterdam the other day. The murderer left a long letter addressed to Ms Ali on the dead man's body.

The abortion debate once more!

Tony Abbott, the newly reappointed Minister for Health, and some other Liberal Party males have ressurected the abortion issue. Of course there was no mention of it during the campaign, but here it is again now that they have control of the senate.

These father-figures of the nation believe (1) that there is an epidemic of abortion caused by the fact that it's available on Medicare and it should, therefore, be removed from Medicare and (2) that late-term abortions should be stopped altogether.

The supposed 'epidemic' consists of the fact that approximately one quarter of all pregnancies are terminated. This is no higher than in several other western countries (including the US and Canada), but higher than in some others. However the data also ignore the fact that not all abortions are deliberately induced. Comparisons with countries that allegedly have lower rates obscure several other possibilities - that reporting is better in countries where abortion is quite legal; that the data are not directly comparable; that abortion rates are higher in countries where women have more equality and control over their lives.

According to the medical professionals, late-term abortions are rare, and scarcely ever carried out for reasons other than danger to the life of either mother or foetus.

To his credit, the leader of the opposition refused to comment. He said it is a question for the women concerned and their medical advisers to decide. He would be presumptuous to express a view on something in which he is unqualified to speak. Unfortunately, Messrs Abbott and co., recognize neither the competence of the women nor the qualification of the medical profession to make a good decision. This is really the crux of the matter. It is the implied assumption that women are irresponsible.

If you look at things without the usual coating of sentiment, a human foetus is actually a parasite. It cannot survive independently of its host (that which we term 'mother') unless there is massive technological intervention. It may have the potential to survive as an independent entity, but under normal circumstances this only happens after 9 months of absolute dependence and several years more of gradually diminishing dependence. Supposing the mother aborts this foetus (with or without intention), medical science can - at huge expense - keep it alive until it reaches that stage of relative independence. By spending very large amounts of money, we are now capable of keeping the parasite alive after only 12 weeks of natural incubation.* In such cases, however, the foetus inevitably becomes so damaged as to have significantly impaired future potential for independence. In other words its parasitical dependence on the host (mother) is likely to be hugely prolonged.

Of course the foetus-parasite is invested by us with special qualities since it is comprised of our own DNA and arouses our emotions. But it is, nevertheless, a parasite and will remain so to a gradually lessening degree for many years.

Women are usually abandoned to raise this parasite alone. Three quarters of women reporting domestic violence say that it first happened during their first pregnancy. Even if that doesn't happen to them, they are treated as invalids - their careers are interrupted as they have to leave work and lose promotion opportunities. They are expected not only to conform to biological imperatives such as breastfeeding (though they often have to hide away and not carry on with normal activities in case somebody is "offended" by the sight of an infant eating food), but to non-biological ones such as doing 90% of the housework.

While fathers often continue to provide money, they equally often consider it to be their own money to be distributed (or not) to mother and child as they see fit. I cannot remember how many times I have seen a father, totally besotted with his baby, hand it over to mother at the first sign of trouble. Whether it's pooh, vomit, a tantrum or just boredom, it's mum's responsibility not dad's.

In short, mothers are the ones who have their lives taken over by kids. Normally, it is only the fathers who have the choice to walk away from the whole problem. Indeed it could be taken as an indication of just how responsibly women act that more of them don't just walk away. Currently, however, women do have the option to terminate the parasite in cases where they will not be able to give it the attention and resources that a growing child deserves. Abbott & co. want to remove this right.

* I got this figure from Lord David Steel, the former British Liberal leader who also wants to curb the rights of women.