An investigation of agricultural land use changes over time in Bao Thang Commune, Ky Son district, Nghe An province, Vietnam (original) (raw)

2007, Hanoi Agricultural University - Regional Conference on Environmental Planning and Management in Southeast Asian Countries

Historically, large amounts of opium were planted in the remote areas of the Northern Mountain Region (NMR) of Vietnam, where the crop was closely connected with ethnic cultivation practices and livelihoods. In 1993, the Government of Vietnam set up Program 6 in order to encourage farmers to stop planting opium and promote other agricultural activities. This paper aims to show land use changes over time in Bao Thang, a commune in the Ca River Basin that traditionally engaged in opium production and implemented Program 6 in 1995. This research uses methodology that includes a field survey based on group interviews, field transects, and spatial analyses and interpretation of Landsat images . The results show that after stopping opium cultivation, farmer livelihoods in the commune depended mainly on swidden cultivation. The swidden area sharply increased to 474 ha in 1998 (a 72 % increase from 1993). It is notable that not only did farmers cultivate more swidden area but they also planted many different types of crops, such as maize, cassava and vegetables. In addition, the number of fields and the average field size also increased following the increase in cultivated swidden area. Moreover, many people had to travel further from residential areas and streams to find agricultural land for cultivation. Keywords: land use, GIS, remote sensing, swidden agriculture, opium reduction, slope, aspect