Experts say drying Delta won’t support future rice
Thanh Nien News, 16 Aug 2009
Rice growing in the Mekong Delta will need to be reduced as the region
is likely to face a water shortage in the next decade, leading
agriculturalists have warned.
Professor Vo Tong Xuan, one of Vietnam’s leading agricultural experts,
said local rice farmers do not know how to use water economically and
each hectare of farmland now consumes more than 20,000 cubic meters of
water.
That means the 3.8 million hectares of Mekong Delta rice needs more
than 76 million cubic meters of water per year, or one sixth of the
region’s annual intake from the Mekong River, Xuan said.
Although rice cultivation requires a large quantity of water, supply
has never been a problem in the Mekong region before, thanks to the
river.
But now experts are warning that climate change and upstream
hydropower projects will siphon off much of the water before it
reaches Vietnam’s main food-growing region.
‘Crazy’ concerns coming true
David Dapice, professor at the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in
Vietnam, said the rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers would
eventually weaken the flow of the Mekong River over the next 10 years.
He added that several hydropower plants to be built on the Mekong
River in China, Thailand and Laos would worsen the problem in the
delta. The river flows through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and
Cambodia before flowing into the ocean via several distributaries in
southern Vietnam.
Dapice said people in the delta were also exploiting too much
groundwater, a practice that could threaten both water supply and
quality.
“More than 10 years ago it would have been crazy to say the Mekong
Delta would ever run out of water,” said Nguyen Minh Thong, former
director of the Can Tho Department of Science and Technology. “But
concerns over a future water shortage are becoming real.”
“The region’s economy depends heavily on water, but provincial
authorities haven’t mapped out any coordinated plan to deal with the
issue,” he said. “In fact they’re even competing with each other to
see who’s got the largest rice area.”
Thong said many people knew about the looming impacts of climate
change but chose to ignore it because “it hasn’t hurt anyone yet.”
No avoiding the issue
Vo Hung Dung, director of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and
Industry’s branch in the city of Can Tho, said reducing rice area was
a crucial task the Mekong Delta could not avoid.
“Such an idea, if brought up now, is likely to face objections from
both central and local governments because the agricultural sector,
especially rice farming, contributes a lot to the economy,” Dung said.
“I know it is impossible to have the Delta rice fields shrunk now as
millions of farmers would be affected,” he said. “But if the issue is
raised now, we could understand it clearly and consider it thoroughly
so that a plan for the future can be created.”
“We have to face the truth,” he said.
Skepticism, reformation
Some have argued that reducing the Delta’s rice growing area would
send poverty rates skyrocketing.
But Dapice said maintaining a large area for rice farming would not
necessarily keep poverty levels where they are as the water shortage
would cause rice outputs to drop. He suggested the government shift
the focus away from rice cultivation.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has already planned
to reduce the rice area in the Mekong Delta by 150,000 hectares over
the next 20 years, but experts have said it would be difficult to
realize such a plan.
Do Van Xe, vice president of Can Tho University, said many farmers do
not know how to cultivate anything other than rice. “If the government
wants them to switch to soy beans, for example, what should it say to
persuade them?”
Experts said that although growing corn and fruit requires much less
water and is more profitable, many farmers still favor planting rice
as the market for the staple was secure.
Xuan said the government should start thinking about completely
reforming the rice farming sector in the Delta. Concrete plans to
switch to other plants needed to be mapped out for rice areas expected
to be most affected by climate change, he said.
Dung, on the other hand, suggested that former rice areas could be
zoned for the industrial and service sectors. But he noted that the
industrialization process must be planned carefully so that it can
create enough jobs for farmers displaced from their rice fields.
According to the Vietnam Food Association, the Mekong Delta produces
about 60 percent of the national rice crop and accounts for 99 percent
of its rice exports. The delta, which is home to 22 percent of the
country’s population, also produces 60 percent of the nation’s seafood
and 80 percent of its fruit crops, a report by the United Nations
said. |
