Agrarian dynamics and farming system differentiation ... - Asia Uplands

SAM Paper Series 8 (2001)

Mountain Agrarian Systems

Agrarian dynamics and farming system differentiation in Ngoc Phai commune, Cho Don district, Bac Kan province, Vietnam Jean-Christophe Castella a, b, Tran Quoc Hoa b, Olivier Husson b, c, Vu Hai Nam d, Dang Dinh Quang b a

Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, 213 rue Lafayette, 75480 Paris 10, France and International Rice Research Institute, Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines b SAM Regional Program, Vietnam Agricultural Science Institute, Thanh Tri, Hanoi, Vietnam c Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), Av. Agropolis, F34398 Montpellier Cedex 5, France d GIS and Remote Sensing Center, National Institute for Agricultural Planning and Projection, 61 Hang Chuoi, Hanoi, Vietnam

Abstract In the Ngoc Phai commune, as in the whole of its containing province, Bac Kan, farming has changed dramatically over the last two decades. Large-scale collective organizations were first constructed and then dismantled, reinstating small family farms and returning the primary means of production, land, labor and capital, to individual farmers. Ethnic heritage in this region has long been the determinant of access to the means of production, and thus the determinant of practices engaged in by different groups of farmers. In the collective period, the Dao, traditional of shifting cultivators, contributed to the intensification of the lowlands alongside the other ethnic groups, limiting the agricultural pressure on the uplands. However, rice production, limited by the availability of lowland area on their cooperative, was not sufficient to cover their dietary needs. Upland rice became an indispensable component of their system. In the 1980s, at the end of the collective period, swidden farming and wood harvesting had become common practices, to the detriment of the forest. Surpluses garnered from upland farming took the form of upland rice in the Dao system and pigs in the Tày system, which was based on the maize-pig association. In the 1990s, the allocation first of paddy fields, and later of uplands, helped to slow the deterioration of the mountain ecosystem, but the new allocations resulted in further inequalities, placing certain groups into extreme poverty and food insecurity. In spite of bans, the poorest have again resorted to slash-and-burn farming to meet their short-term dietary needs. Such practices are not sustainable when undertaken in conditions of high population density, and the resulting damages can no longer be linked to any particular ethnic group. New production systems, along with new spatial and social organizations, are currently emerging in farming communities. While the new approaches are having an unquestionable impact on natural resource management practices, their sustainability is uncertain. Successive reallocations of the means of production have led to the development of a variety of land use systems, some of which are still practiced in the commune, but the environment has changed. In an extremely dynamic socioeconomic context, and with population pressure now four times greater than before the collective period, farmers need to rebuild a technical frame of reference that will insure the compatibility of their individual strategies with the collective good. Keywords: Agrarian systems, Spatial dynamics, agriculture-livestock integration, differentiation, typology, mountains, land use, North Vietnam

Agrarian dynamics and differentiation in the Ngoc Phai commune

1. Introduction Local authorities have long blamed North Vietnam’s progressive reduction in forest cover on ethnic minority groups, such as the Dao (pronounced “Zao”) and the H’mong, and their practices of slash-and-burn farming and shifting cultivation. The Ngoc Phai commune Dao, settled in the 1962 collectivization, have always been included in the above group because of their persistence in using slash-and-burn techniques. Unsustainable use of forest resources in combination with rising population pressure endangers the ecological and economic sustainability of traditional upland agrarian systems (Bal et al., 1997). High population pressure has made land accessibility a vital issue for lowland rice subsistence farming households. Although the Tày ethnic group, both the first colonizers and the majority in the Ngoc Phai commune, controls the majority of the paddy fields, it would be an oversimplification to treat Dao agriculture as confined to the uplands and Tày agriculture to the lowlands. There are Tày who have been without paddy fields since the land reallocations of the early 90s, and there are Dao who have gained access to lowland paddy fields through the recently created land market in Ngoc Phai. To assist households in developing cultivation systems that are more respecting of the environment, we must first understand the processes and circumstances that have led to their current situations. We must also categorize the diversity of existing household farms to insure that the technical and organizational innovations of our research are proposed with consideration for

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the local community’s objectives and constraints. The two components of the Ngoc Phai commune monographic study are (i) an historical analysis of commune level agrarian dynamics and their environmental impact, and (ii) farm household differentiation.

2. Method The approach is based on relating a farming systems analysis to geographic changes. There are four main components to the project: • The agro-ecological zoning of the district, on the basis of which the Ngoc Phai commune was chosen for the study. This was based on the analysis of secondary data (maps, statistics, etc.); • An examination of agrarian system dynamics over the last five decades, with information gained from surveying witnesses to the commune’s history; • An examination of geographic changes, with the use of a chronological series of aerial photographs (1983, 1989) and SPOT satellite images (1990, 1995 and 1998); • Surveys of a sample of farmers representative of the diversity of groups present in the commune (n = 250). Using a semi-structured questionnaire, we were able to understand individual farm land uses and their associated production combination possibilities, allowing us both to explain the present diversity and to identify agricultural land use evolution patterns.

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J.C. Castella, T.Q. Hoa, O. Husson, V.H. Nam, D.D. Quang / SAM Paper Series 8 (2001)

3. Natural environment and agricultural dynamics in the Cho Don district Cho Don district, situated approximately 220 km North of Hanoi, is one of six districts in the Bac Kan province. The total area of the district is approximately 92,000 ha and the population 46,800, for an average population density of 51 people / km2. The majority Tày ethnic group represents 76% of the population. The other ethnic groups, in order of size, are the Dao (10%), the Kinh (10%), the Nung (2%) and the H’mong.

3.1. Climate The region is characterized by a subtropical monsoon climate, with two distinct seasons (Figure 2) that regulate farmers’ practices (Bal et al, 1997): The warm and rainy season, from April to September. The highest precipitations are observed in July, with an average of 263 mm. Rainfall levels in the rainy season represent 82% of annual precipitation. Temperatures vary from 22.9°C to 27.3°C. Summer irrigated rice is grown in this season. The cold and dry season, from October to March. Average monthly precipitations range from 13.0 mm (in December) to 70.5 mm, and the average temperature is 18°C. Temperatures can fall dramatically in this season, resulting even in occasional frost. The dryness and low temperatures make rice growing difficult, so paddies in this season are either left fallow or used for dryland farming.

3.2. Soils and landscape units • Four main morphological groups can be identified in the district: alluvial valleys, high terraces, high hills and mountains (Raunet, 1999). • The alluvial valleys are where immersion rice cultivation is practiced. The soil is deep and saturated with water in the rainy season. The gray-brown valley soils, called fluvisoils, are predominantly silty, and rich in organic matter. • The high terraces are formed on ancient gravelly clay alluvia resting on clayey schistose and on colluvium from bordering slopes. These brown-gray-yellow soils are rich in organic matter, as they benefit from the leaching of forest humus. Houses, maize

and soybean crops, and terraced ricefields are generally found in these zones. • The high hills, with altitudes from 300 to 600 m, are characterized by a substratum composed of shale and limestone bands. These yellow-ochre soils, called acrisols, are washed out, from 0 to 100 cm in thickness, have clayey to silty-clay textures, and an acidic pH (pHKCl between 4 and 4.5). The primary annual crops on this kind of soil in Ngoc Phai are upland rice and cassava. • The mountains, with altitudes from 300 to 1000 m and gradients between 30 and 50°, are distinguished in terms of soil lithology. Two lithological groups dominate: the limestone-banded schists (as in the high hills), and the crystal limestone schists. The latter (phaeozems) are characterized by white limestone outcroppings on the abrupt massif walls. The soils are clay (50% clay), and yellow-brown to brown in color, the pHKCl between 5 and 6. The surface organomineral horizon is thick and rich in organic matter. Maize is the main cultivated crop on these heavily-sloped (up to 60°) calcium soils. The forest exists predominantly on the last two morphological units. The forest is defined by a South-North gradient, with the thickest but most degraded (predominantly bamboo) forests on the schistose hills in the South and the thinner but richer in tree species diversity (due to slash-and-burn land use) forests appearing near the more populated zones in the North (Bal et al. 1997). The high hills and mountains are characterized by a variety of land uses, due to the significant pedological and microclimatic variability (depending on the altitude and orientation of the slopes), as well as the different cultural practices of the endemic farmers (Brabant et al., 1999). Ngoc Phai commune was selected for our monographic study based on the agroecological zoning of the Cho Don district. The commune is in the transition zone between the North-South zones described above, and integrates the diversity of landscapes and agronomic issues of the district (Bal et al., 2000), while illustrating the interactions between the Tày and Dao ethnic groups in the management of a common space and shared natural resources.


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Ngoc Phai

Legend Valleys and alluvial terraces Karstic depression and limestone Medium hills (schists and limestone bed schists) High hills (schists and limestone bed schists) Mountains: granite and gabbros Mountains: schists

Figure 1: Morphopedological map of Cho Don district (adapted from Raunet 1999) Km

Precipitation in mm 300

Temperatures in °C

35 30

250

25

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20

Average rainfall

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15

Frequential analysis 80%

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Frequential analysis 50% Frequential analysis 20%

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Evapotranspiration

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Figure 2: Climatic data from Bac Kan meteorological station (1985-1995).

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minimum temperatures maximum temperatures

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4. The effects of agrarian dynamics on the region’s land use and farm evolution patterns. 4.1. Tày - Dao: a dual agrarian system Until 1960, the Tày inhabited the lowlands and cultivated an annual irrigated rice crop, using a collective system of water and labor management based on mutual aid. The plentiful lowland area met the needs of a yet small population (density < 10 people / km2). On the gentle slopes bordering the lowlands, they cultivated maize and cassava for pig farming, or less commonly as a security against food shortages from poor rice harvests or natural disasters. Some families built terraces, despite the availability of lowlands and the burden of such construction. Buffaloes were raised both for draft power and manure, used as a fertilizer for paddy fields. Land inequalities existed, based on the historical settling of the commune. The founding families owned the largest and most productive paddy fields. Tày farmers with fewer paddy fields worked the fields of the founding families in exchange for rice. Social organization, which determined a households’ access to irrigation water, was thus the main determinant of farmers’ production strategies. The Dao, the “people of the forest,” were primarily producers of upland rice, but also cultivated maize and cassava. Their shifting cultivation system was based on swidden agriculture with long fallow periods. The gathering of forest products (bamboo shoots, wild vegetables, mushrooms, etc.) and hunting of still plentiful game played essential roles in the Dao system, particularly in times of food shortage. The typical hamlet consisted of only two to four households, so as to prevent the saturation of the land. The congregating of cultivated plots helped limit losses to wild animals, while facilitating mutual aid, common practice in Dao communities. The regular abandoning of the plots implied a constant relocation of the hamlet. Upland territory was subject neither to Tày-like land regulations or taxes imposed by French colonizers. A plot cleared by a family belonged to them for the duration of use, but was free from ownership as soon as it was abandoned. Given the lack of clearly

defined property, land ownership was not a criteria for social differentiation. The socially elevated in the Dao community were those in possession of water buffaloes (up to 6 per family), which were considered a kind of saving. They were also useful for material transportation when hamlets were being relocated. Animal fertilizers were not used. Interactions between the Dao and the Tày were rare, as the systems were founded on very distinct landscape units. The main characteristics of the pre-collective systems are presented in Table 1. Table 1: Comparison of the traditional Tày and Dao cultivation systems Ethnic Group System Type Location Main crop Limiting factor of upland field area

Tày Sedentary Lowlands Irrigated rice

Dao Shifting Uplands Upland rice

Labor peaks

Weeds

Type of upland fallow

Short (5-10 years)

Long (20 years)

Importance of forest products in diet.

Average

Significant

Role of buffaloes

Labor, fertilizer

Capital, transport

4.2. From mutual aid to a collective The first land reform arrived on the tails of North Vietnamese independence in 1954. The reform aimed to confiscate land from wealthy landowners and give it to the most impoverished. In Ngoc Phai, as in the rest of the Cho Don district, this reform had only a minimal effect because of the low level of social differentiation (Ha, 1993). In the lowlands, agricultural ministry officers oversaw the creation of mutual aid groups composed of an average of five households each. The official mutual aid system, in which only Tày farmers participated, resulted in an increase in irrigable land area, swidden area and subsistence farming.

4.3. The collective agrarian system In 1959, the first cooperative, ten households in size, was instated in Phieng Lieng village. Its success led all the other villages in the Ngoc Phai commune to


chemical input usage, plow innovations, etc.), yields were stagnating and even declining in the Dao cooperative (1.7t/ha compared with more than 5t/ha in the Tày cooperative). Lowland paddy field production did not meet the subsistence requirements of the Dao Ban Cuon village, leading the cooperative to engage in upland rice cultivation. The remuneration systems of lowland and upland cultivation differed significantly. A large proportion of lowland production went to the state (30%), while the full product of the uplands was shared among the cooperative according to the labor point system. Further, swidden fields cleared from primary forests offered higher yields in terms of both rice (4t/ha) and labor (32,000 VND/day) than lowland ricefields (20,000 VND/day) (in 1999 Vietnam Dong). With work on swiddens considerably more profitable than on paddy fields, it is not surprising that the Dao gave little attention to ricefield intensification.

organize themselves into cooperatives. Membership at this stage was voluntary. In 1961, a national program with the goal of settling the country’s ethnic minorities placed eighteen Dao families into Ban Cuon village, on the terraced lower slopes. They worked there alongside those Tày families who had chosen to stay in the village. The program put the Dao in a place where they could contribute to the cooperative while being more effectively observed and controlled by local authorities. Although six of the Tày founding families of Ban Cuon left for other Tày villages in the commune, the arrival of Kinh migrants from the overpopulated Red River delta (Thai Binh) resulted in significant population growth. Between 1964 and 1974, more than 4000 Kinh passed through Cho Don district to build the road connecting Bac Kan to Ba Be, and some stayed behind after the work was finished. The net result was a migration toward the interior of the commune and increased pressure on local paddy fields (Figure 4). pop. / km2

90 80

! Commune

70

" Tày Village

" "

# Dao Village

60 50 40

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30

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20

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0 1960

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Figure 3: Changes in population density in Ngoc Phai commune. Source: field survey. 3500 ! Commune

3000

m2 / person

In 1962, Ngoc Phai commune was composed of two distinct cooperatives: the predominantly Dao Ban Cuon cooperative, and the Ba Ngoc cooperative, composed of three sub-cooperatives containing the other five Tày villages. The means of production were collectively owned, with the exception of pigs, fowl, gardens and ponds, which remained private. Laborers were paid approximately 70% of total paddy production, distributed according to a labor point system. The remaining 30% went to the cooperative, for administrative expenses, agricultural taxes and the like. The system was egalitarian only in name, and led to a marked differentiation between villages based on the ricefield area available to each individual. Despite low population density (Figure 3), the return per person per day on a paddy ranged from 0.8 kg to 1.5 kg between cooperatives. A new dual system was instated, composed of a Dao cooperative with an average of 550 m² of ricefield per person and a Tày cooperative with an average of 2600 m² per person (Figure 4).

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2500

" Tày Village "

# Dao Village

! 2000 "

1500

!

1000 500

#

#

" !

" !

#

#

1990

2000

0 1960

1970

1980

As the Tày cooperative intensified its rice

cultivation systems (through doublecropping, expansion of irrigated area, new non-photosynthetic short-cycle varieties,

Figure 4: Changes in ricefield area per person in Ngoc Phai commune. Source: field survey

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Even while disparities between cooperatives progressively deepened, new disparities arose between individual households in the cooperatives. Private activities had developed in the Dao cooperative, and private swidden fields now appeared alongside the collective swidden fields. The blurred borders between collective and private sloping lands allowed households with greater labor forces to apply it to the more profitable private activities (upland rice, pig raising, forest product extraction, etc.) once they had completed their required collective work. In the Ban Cuon cooperative, buffaloes were not all collectively owned. Very few were needed to prepare the soil of the small lowland areas. A family in possession of six buffaloes could give two to the cooperative and capitalize on the remaining four, if they had sufficient labor to care for the animals. In contrast, the Tày cooperative was able to achieve food security through ricefield intensification, and private activities did not develop. The difficulty of reconciling ricefield work schedules with the cultivation of swidden crops (upland rice and maize) led to a focus on the former. A double process of differentiation had developed: (i) between collectives, based on lowland paddy field area, and (ii) between households within a cooperative, based on a household’s labor force in proportion to the number of mouths to feed.

4.4. The 1970s crisis In 1970, the village cooperatives were joined into one large communal cooperative. The new level of government brought about a constant restructuring and bureaucratization, steadily diminishing the flexibility of the Tày cooperative’s management system. Failures in the cooperative system led to a progressively growing disinterest and lassitude on the part of its members. In spite of the technical innovations of the green revolution, yields had remained mediocre because of insufficient and irregular chemical input allocations. Further, manure recuperation and green manure were not systematically implemented, which led to a reduction in their use in the paddy fields. In 20 years, the population of the commune had doubled (Figure 3), exceeding the rate

of new paddy field construction, causing lowland surface area per person to drop by approximately 40% (Figure 4). Increased population density in combination with reduced yields led to a steady reduction in the value of labor. With cooperative work no longer meeting households’ needs, farmers began again to cultivate the slopes, in spite of bans imposed by authorities. Sloping land cultivation began on plots located far from villages, difficult to access and out of sight of authorities, but with time the practice became progressively more open. In the context of war, it was difficult for officials to outlaw slash-and-burn practices while the state itself was encouraging large-scale agriculture on massive swiddens. After reunification in 1975, the state passed a new forest protection law. Wood harvesting was restricted to the state’s forestry enterprises, and the first forest plantation programs (Styrax tonkinensis) were launched in Ngoc Phai, to the general disinterest of the local population. Slashand-burn practices were made severely punishable by increased fines, resulting in a food crisis in Ngoc Phai between 1977 and 1980, the edge of famine.

4.5. Decree 100, the first step toward decollectivization “Decree 100” was the government’s response to the food crisis in the collectives. With the 1981 reform, the state remained sole proprietor of the land, but ricefields were allocated to families based on the sizes of their households, for periods of 4 to 5 years. Each households had to donate a fixed proportion of its production to the cooperative, determined by the head of the cooperative based on the quality and size of the household’s paddy fields. After supplying this quantity, a household had the remainder of the harvest at its disposal. The cooperative remained in charge of chemical input allocation. Specialized brigades were responsible for soil preparation (labor, harrowing), sowing and irrigation. Transplanting, crop tending and harvest were managed by the individual households. Buffaloes owned by the collective were sold back to households. Families that had not possessed cattle before the collective period could now do so, given the low sale prices of the animals (50% of their initial value).


In Ngoc Phai, the new regulations had the opposite effect of what was intended. Ricefield productivity did not significantly increase because of cooperative problems with chemical input allocation. Labor continued to be more profitable on swiddens than on rice fields, and sloping cultivation dominated, to the detriment of ricefield intensification. In 1983, the high profitability of swiddens instigated an uncontrolled rush by families to claim as much forest land as possible. The most coveted forests were those that were richest and closest to the villages, but the expansion of swidden land was not confined to the vicinity of villages. Households competed first against one another for forest land, and then against other villages as the areas expanded further. Within five years, swidden cultivation had claimed all of the commune’s clearable land. Plots were so far from the villages that farmers had to live in temporary bamboo shelters during the cultivation season. The Tày and Dao villages once again distinguished themselves through their use of land. In the Dao villages, sloping lands were expanded primarily for upland rice. Production tended to exceed needs, and the upland rice surplus was stored in granaries, while irrigated rice was sold. This behavior resulted from (i) a desire to insure food security across long shortages, (ii) the better preservability of upland rice, and (iii) the taste of upland rice, favored by the Dao. In contrast, Tày farmers used the uplands to grow cash crops, primarily sticky rice. The Tày did not stockpile their rice surplus; the majority of both upland and lowland varieties was sold. Swidden fields were further expanded by the Tày to grow maize for pig raising, which was rapidly developing with the introduction of fastergrowing cross-breeds (Lai Kinh Te and Mong Cai) that could grows as large as 150 kg in a single year of fattening. Their growth required a diet considerably richer than their traditional cousins, hence the increase in land devoted to maize. The period following Decree 100 led to an intense farm differentiation in the Ngoc Phai commune. The paddy fields had been distributed based on the number of individuals in a household, whether or not they were laborers. The paddy field surface area farmed by each laborer was thus

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directly related to family composition. For a given number of people in a family, the greater the proportion of active laborers, the less area was available per laborer. A family with a large proportion of laborers could therefore devote more time and effort to other activities, such as swidden cultivation (Table 2). Table 2: Land use strategies (types A and B) developed by households after Decree 100 Household type

A

B

Ratio of laborers to number of mouths to feed + per household Ricefield area per laborer + Swidden area per laborer + Production strategy • Cash crops + • Maize and livestock + • Land accumulation + Capital accumulation + N.B.: The (+) sign represents an increased value and the (-) sign a decreased value of an indicator.

Labor could be applied either to uplands or lowlands. Households with a lower paddy field surface area per laborer (type A) could employ the following strategy: • take part in paddy field work, increasing yields and surpassing their production quotas; • cultivate the swidden fields with maize and cassava for pig raising, as well as perennial fruit trees. Customary land use rights allowed households to take possession of large areas on the slopes and gain significant land reserves; • develop new paddy fields in the lowlands. Households with large ricefield surface areas per laborer (type B) had to choose between the following two strategies: • neglect the paddy fields and concentrate on swidden crops; • concentrate on the paddy fields, while neglecting swidden crops. A household was better off if it possessed only a limited number of paddy fields (type A): • swidden fields were more productive and thus more profitable than paddy fields; • the remuneration system of collective paddy field work meant that for the same compensation, a type B laborer had to perform more collective work than a type A

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laborer. Type A laborers were also more likely to surpass their quotas and reap a surplus profit. The value of type B labor points was tied to a household’s ability to attain its quota, and the household was penalized when it did not. Households mixed private and cooperative practices at will. Increased private practices, mostly extensive slash-and-burn agriculture, resulted in (i) a significant rise in the population’s nutrition and the beginning of capital accumulation, (ii) a notable deterioration of forest resources, and (iii) differentiation between households.

4.6. Resolution 10, the second step toward decollectivization In 1988, the state passed Resolution 10, which led to the dismantling of the cooperatives. Ricefields were distributed in relation to the number of laborers in each household. Farmers gained ownership of all cropping activities, chemical input allocation and irrigation. They regained all of the means of production except the land. The state retained possession of the land, but bestowed usage rights to farmers. The family farm became the elementary unit of production. The reform was also marked by the creation of a free, private market (purchase/sale of rice, fertilizer, equipment such as huskers and hand tractors, as well as buffalo meat targeted at Hanoi consumers). The latest structural changes along with the decreasing profitability of slash-and-burn techniques, were finally able to stimulate increased paddy field production. The amount of time and capital invested in paddy fields markedly increased, leading to higher yields. Paddy field intensification took place in the lowlands, with a significant proportion of plots passing from one crop per year to two. At this time, the Tày founding families in the neighboring province of Cao Bang started a movement to reclaim ancestral lands, a movement which quickly spread through all of Bac Thai1. Farmers who had not been members of the initial Tày mutual aid groups were deprived of almost all of the lowland plots that they had been farming since the 1

Bac Kan was created in 1997 from the joining of two districts in Cao Bang and a part of Bac Thai.

creation of the first cooperatives. Negotiations settled the ownership of ricefields that had been constructed during the cooperative period. Land conflicts occasionally surfaced but the reallocation process was irreversible, and households in Ngoc Phai soon became differentiated based on access to paddy fields. • The Tày founding families. By 1991, the founding Tày families had claimed almost all of the paddy fields. Most paddy fields were now producing two crops per year, and the increasing availability of chemical inputs along with the spreading of organic fertilizers (pig and buffalo manure) contributed to a further increase in yields (now up to 2.8 t/ha per crop cycle). For the founding families, the period was marked by the intensification of irrigated cultivation in the lowlands and the progressive abandoning of the upland rice that had now decreased significantly in profitability. Swidden fields were so widespread that the uplands could no longer provide the kind of yields seen in the past. Work productivity levels on sloping land (about 8,000 VND/day) had become considerably inferior to those on the paddy fields (15 to 20,000 VND/day). • The losers of the lowland distribution process. Regardless of their ethnic heritage, families who were not native to their village found themselves without paddy fields. In Ban Cuon, only one hectare of paddy field was still owned by the Dao community, a plot that had been constructed in the cooperative period. The combination of increased demographic pressure and the loss of paddy fields forced the Dao to expand their swidden areas to insure dietary selfsufficiency. Their search for virgin land fertile enough for upland rice cultivation led them well beyond the borders of the village. Upland rice yields remained high on the plots cleared of primary (or aged) forest, and the average plot size was high. Yields on plots gained from fallow lands near the village that had been forested for about 20 years were approximately 2t/ha. But with population density now near 29 people/km², it had become difficult to find fallow lands with 20-30 year old forests. Cultivation time increased while fallow time decreased. Making matters worse, sloping lands had now become indispensable in meeting the food needs of a significant portion of the commune.


Some families chose at this time to migrate to South Vietnam, drawn by the intensive development of coffee crops on pioneer lands (Roussel, Cai, 1997, De Koning, 1998). Others, mostly of Kinh origin, opened small shops along the roads. Poor households turned to the extraction of forest resources, which provided a necessary complement to their income. The pressure on natural resources was thus relatively low for the descendants of the founding families, and significantly higher for households who had been deprived of ricefields and were searching for alternatives.

4.7. The 1993 land law In 1993, the state passed a new land law that essentially ratified the land redistribution

paddy field area/laborer

process that had already begun. The state remained the sole proprietor of the land and the owners of land titles had to follow land utilization laws. Land with annual crops (paddy fields) and aquaculture (fish farms) were allocated for periods of 20 years, while forest lands were allocated for periods of 50 years. Farmers were granted new rights allowing them to transfer, sell, buy, rent and inherit land. The granting of land titles gave rise to plot measurements and the delimitation of forest zones. Well-defined property rights and access to ricefields and forests caused new production strategies to develop (Figure 5), the culmination of almost ten years of changing land access rules. Both the new rules and resulting strategies have remained stable to the present day.

upland resource mining

collective period

A1 B1

10

land market

C1

I

C2

II

B1

IV C3

III

B2

B2

C4

VI V

A2 1960

1970

A1: Tày founding families A2: “Immigrant families” (Dao, Tày, Kinh, Nung) B1: Tày cooperatives B2: Dao cooperatives C1: Tày, Kinh farms, small labor force, small swidden areas, dietary self-sufficiency C2: Tày, Kinh farms, large labor force, large swidden plots, surpluses C3: Dao farms, small labor force, average swidden areas, few buffalos, dietary self-sufficiency C4: Dao farms, large labor force, very large swidden areas, many buffaloes, surpluses

1980

1990

2000

I: Founding Tày families with reclaimed land, rice surpluses, many buffalos II: Young Tày couples (descendants of founding family), recently settled on inherited paddy fields, rice self-sufficiency, corn sales, few buffaloes III: “Immigrant” families, whose numbers grew in the 80s, many buffaloes, ricefields purchased in 1993, rice self-sufficiency. IV: Tày founding families no longer living in their home villages, repurchased paddy fields, rice shortages, significant off-farm activities. V: “Immigrant” families who recently repurchased paddy fields, numbers growing during the 90s, rice shortages, large swidden areas. VI: “Immigrant” families without paddy fields, rice shortages, few buffaloes, large swidden areas (corn and upland rice), significant off-farm practices.

Figure 1: Differentiation process and farm evolution pattern over time in Ngoc Phai commune

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cultivation. Between 1995 and 1998, a small increase in ricefield area can be seen on Figure 6-B. This came about after a decrease connected to lowland land distributions between 1989 to 1995.

4.8. Agrarian dynamics, landscape transformation and environmental impact.

By the end of the 1980s, Tày villagers were farming all accessible arable sloping lands (Figure 6). Natural forest cover (forest and shrub land from Figure 6-A) had reached its lowest level in the history of Ngoc Phai. With the end of the expansion phase of the 1980s, farmlands were again concentrated around settlements. Some forest regeneration occurred in the Tày villages in the South of the commune, while the North witnessed an increased clearing of secondary forests (Figure 10). The reclaiming of paddy fields by Tày founding families thus reversed the Tày/Dao agrarian dynamics of the 1980s. Throughout the commune, forest land was no longer decreasing in quantity, but now in quality, with scrub land (Figure 6-A) taking the place of the forest. Figure 6B demonstrates shorter fallow periods and a growing proportion of continually cultivated sloping lands (defined as an increasing ratio of “sloping land crops” to “mosaics”, combinations of cultivated and fallow plots). However, village-level observations defy the dynamics just described. In Ban Cuon village, the growing shortage of sloping lands led farmers to develop new terraces in spite of mediocre yields in the first years of

Recently, farming landscapes in Tày villages have stabilized, while the environmental situation of Ban Cuon has been aggravated by a large scale return to slash-and-burn practices. Such systems, confined to certain villages and households based on their lack of access to the lowlands, are self-defeating in that they destroy their own resource base, and local farmers are looking for alternatives. 2500

Area (ha)

2000 1500 1000 500 0 1983

A

1989

Dense forest Scrub land

1995

1998

Open forest

400

Area (ha)

Figure 9 summarizes the main phases in the evolution of the agrarian systems of the Dao village of Ban Cuon and the Tày village of Ban Dieu. We examine the evolution of local agriculture and agrarian landscapes through the relation between ecological dynamics and socioeconomic transformations. Figure 10 reveals that the environmental impact of the described agrarian dynamics was considerable. Between 1983 and 1989, swidden fields were extended, beginning with the area around the commune’s paddy fields, dwellings and transport links. Figure 7 demonstrates that sloping land cultivation was much more significant in the Tày villages than in the Dao village of Ban Cuon (in the north-west of the map). The Dao appear not to have changed their farming practices on sloping lands from 1983-1989. Instead, we see in Ban Cuon a significant expansion of paddy field area, and a relative regeneration of forest land, characteristic of a slash-and-burn system with long fallow periods.

300 200 100 0

B

1983

1989

Lowland rice Sloping cultivation

1995

1998

Mosaic Pasture

Figure 6: Land use dynamics. A: Forest and natural vegetation, B: farmland. Sources: data extracted from land utilization maps from Figure 10. New environmental problems have surfaced, problems that concern a large number of commune farmers. Animal husbandry in the region expanded both as a means of saving for farmers and in response to the recent creation of the meat market for the delta zones (Figure 8). The steep increase in large ruminants (buffalo and cattle) has become a


• growing crops in areas inaccessible to animals.

threat to sloping lands and forests. The transition from collective herd management to individual management led to increased roaming of animals in both the lowlands and along the slopes (Tuan, 1998), leading to an increased number of disputes.

In Ban Cuon, it was the existing upland crop systems that defined the methods of buffalo management. The animals were monitored during the day and stabled in the evenings through the whole upland rice growing season. Given that upland rice crops could be maintained only for short time periods (not more than 4 years) and their areas were often large, Dao farmers were not willing to invest in hedges and trenches. In contrast, the holders of terraced paddy fields often built barriers around their permanent crops.

Ban Cuon village

In the Tày villages, swidden crops were systematically protected with hedges and trenches. In contrast to the Dao village, it was the behavior of the animals that defined the ways that crops would be protected. The animals were rarely monitored, even during the growing season. Sloping land cultivation thus required an increased labor or monetary investment if crops were to be protected from roaming animals. Tày farmers often chose simply not to cultivate those areas where buffaloes were present in large numbers. The problems connected with the protecting of crops from roaming buffaloes remain unsolved, notwithstanding the serious conflicts between the Dao farmers of Ban Cuon and their Tày neighbors. Researchers are looking for solutions that will undoubtedly imply new spatial organizations for agricultural practices.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Figure 7: Map showing land use changes in Ngoc Phai commune between 1983 and 1989. Sources: land use map in Figure 10.

no. of head

Legend: 1. Deteriorated forest cover, 2. Savannization, pastures, 3. Paddy field development, 4. Regenerated forest, 5. Newly cleared land, 6. Unchanged, 7. Slash-and-burn expansions, 8. Urbanization.

Farmers have developed a number of solutions to the problems caused by roaming animals: • building hedges and trenches around cultivated plots; • temporarily (during the crop cycle) establishing shelters close to agricultural plots to better survey crops;

12

1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0

pigs buffaloe 90

92

94

96

98

Figure 8: Pig and buffalo dynamics in the Ngoc Phai commune. Source: land surveys.

00

High biodiversity

Lowlands available for agriculture

Abundant forest

Subsistence agriculture

Low level of market integration

Low population density: < 10 people/km²

Cooperative system not effective

•

•

•

Increasing population density: 25 people/km²

Cooperative system

Rapid deterioration of forest cover

Individual natural resource management

Reduced fallow periods on sloping lands

Rapid decrease in biodiversity

•

Agricultural intensification on sloping lands near villages: terraces, hedges, etc.

• • •

•

Significant erosion and acidification of upland soils

• •

Kinh house

•

New village limits

Land allocated to farmers. Tày reclaim ancestral land

Sloping land crops far from villages to • Lowlands no longer sufficient to insure insure dietary self-sufficiency food security (50 people/km²)

•

Increasing population density: new immigrants in the lowlands

•

Clearing outlawed and private forest use.

•

bans

• Sloping land development, in spite of

Ricefield intensification: improved varieties, manure, chemical fertilizers

•

• Lowland land saturation • Collective lowland management,

• Floods destroy ricefields near the river in 1986 / 1996

near villages

• Rapid upland deforestation • Soil deterioration on sloping lands

Lowland paddy fields

Gardens

Dense forest Degraded forest

Dao house Tày house

Upland crops

2000

System limits

1990

individual upland management.

Farming limited to the lowlands

High biodiversity in the mountains

Lowland and valleys completely used

Abundant forest

1975

Collective natural resource management

• •

• • •

1960

13

Figure 9: Agricultural transformations analyzed through the relation between ecological dynamics and changes in socioeconomic environment

• •

Minimal contact between ethnic groups occupying lowlands and uplands

•

Socioeconomic environment

•

Paddy fields managed collectively by the Tày

•

Shifting cultivation in the mountains: Dao and H’mong ethnic groups, long fallow periods.

•

Farming / hunting / gathering

• • •

Natural Resources

Time

Dynamiques agraires et différenciation dans la commune de Ngoc Phai


14

1983

1989

1995

1998

Legend Dense forest Open forest Scrub land

Lowland rice Sloping land crops Mosaics

Pastures Villages Clouds

Figure 10: Land use maps 1983, 1989, 1995, 1998 Ngoc Phai commune. Source: Aerial photographs for 1983 and 1989, SPOT satellite images for 1995 and 1998.

15


5. Farm diversity and access to the means of production

The disputes that arose from the founding families’ reclamation movement demonstrates the importance of possessing paddy fields. The studied area may seem relatively unpopulated (54 people/km²), but paddy fields occupy only a small portion of the commune. The population pressure on the Ngoc Phai paddy fields is actually quite high (2,200 people/km²) when compared with that of the Red River delta. The disputes caused by the unequal distribution of the lowlands dissipated toward the end of the 1990s, as landdeprived farmers took stock of the finality of the 1993 land law. That they did not seek to overturn the law indicates that access to ricefields was relatively clearly defined and stabilized by this point in time. There remained several means of access to ricefields. • Purchase. In 1992, the first land sales took place in the Ngoc Phai commune. The Tày founders, after reclaiming their ancestral land (Type I), were not interested in reselling it. Between lowland ricefields and upland swidden crops, they soon found that they had more land than they could make use of, given the size of their labor force. An extensive single-cropping system was their most practical option. A few possibilities may explain why they chose not to abandon the swidden fields to invest further in the ricefields: (i) upland rice yields remained high and production remained profitable. (ii) in retaining hold of swidden crops, farmers could maintain property rights on the cleared land. The lowlands were primarily held for land security. Land sales by descendants of founding families have therefore begun to take place only very recently. The sellers are primarily families with insufficient labor to maintain their ricefields, and a small number of descendants. The profit from such sales is generally reinvested in new equipment (huskers, hand tractors), livestock (cattle), and cement house construction. The Tày who were relocated to the interior of the commune in the 1962 collectivization (Type III) were the first to gradually sell

away their land, either in part or in its entirety. The first paddy fields sold were either terraced or in places with poor soil, or insufficient water or solar radiation. In Ban Cuon, the majority of the Tày chose to sell their ricefields for the following reasons: - the strain of family separation: while descendants managed lands in Ban Cuon, their parents continued to live in Ban Dieu; - crop dispersion: paddy fields in Ban Cuon, and maize plots at Ban Dieu. - poor yields at Ban Cuon in comparison with the rest of the commune (resulting from the recent management of the paddy fields). In 2000, it became very difficult to purchase land in the Tày villages, while land transactions continued to take place in Ban Cuon. Meanwhile, speculation had driven the price of paddy fields up by a factor of four (Figure 11). price (million VND)

5.1. Access to paddy fields

8 6 4 2 0 Ban Cuon

1992

Ban Dieu

1995

1999

Figure 11: Paddy field price dynamics in two villages in the Ngoc Phai commune. Source: land surveys. N.B.: Average price of a 1000 m² paddy field plot adapted for double-cropping in 1999 Vietnam Dong.

• Inheritance. A young married couple could gain access to a paddy field by inheriting a portion of a parent’s land (Type II). In both Dao and Tày communities, land was traditionally passed from father to son. This principle kept land in the line of male descent, preventing an outsider from gaining access to land through marriage. The Dao only recently adopted this principle, having never before been landowners. With the growing shortage of paddy fields and the difficulties had by the Dao in obtaining them, they became very attached to patriarchal land inheritance.


• The borrowing and lending of paddy fields most often took place within a family, between brothers or between father and son. It was also occasionally known for a farmer to lend land to a farmer in another family, if the former owned more than he was able to cultivate. The lender did not generally receive any compensation for the loan. • Tenant farming was practiced in the commune, though rarely, illustrating the growing interaction between ethnic communities. At Ban Cuon, some Dao farmers benefited in 1999 from the “loan” of a paddy field plot (1000 to 1400 m²) from Tày farmers. The Dao farmers were allowed to work the land during the spring and reap the harvest. In exchange for this “loan”, they would prepare the soil (labor, harrowing) and provide buffalo manure for the second crop, conducted by the Tày farmer. • Renting. We did not observe land renting over the course of our survey, but it nonetheless existed in the commune between 1993 and 1995. Land tenants had to give landowners a certain sum of money or a certain portion of the harvest in return for the use of the land. According to the former tenants interviewed, this practice was quickly abandoned by landowners, who preferred instead to sell their land. • The Construction of new paddy fields was another way for farmers to gain lowland access. This required an adequate site and a significant amount of labor. The only households, particularly at Ban Cuon, who could engage in the task were those in possession of a significant number of laborers or enough capital to hire help, as well as developable lands (close enough to a water source for irrigation, few stumps, etc.).

5.2. Means of access to sloping lands Access to sloping land varied from household to household, based on the history of village settlement. We will begin by discussing their land situations at the time of the distribution of sloping lands. The land situation after two series’ of allocations The notion that the forest lands allocated to households corresponded to the ancestral

16

swidden fields owned by those households has not been systematically verified. In the swidden expansions of the 1980s, the founding Tày families, like the Dao, cleared the sloping lands nearest their settlements. This forced families arriving later in the collectivization to go further to find virgin lands, beyond village limits. Many such households were not later given the option to reclaim their ancestral land. Some who did have that option chose not to act on it, as the land was too far from their places of residence. There was little benefit in becoming the owner of land which was either unusable or impossible to keep track of. Still others were dissuaded by the fear that a tax would be imposed on the new allotments. Usage rights and sloping land classification Sloping lands were divided into four categories, based on zoning done by local authorities (Bal et al., 1997 ; Mellac, 1997): (i) land reserved for state enterprise managed forest plantations, (ii) pastures, in the form of grasses and secondary forests, managed by the village community, (iii) protected forests, mainly primary forests on karst formations, (iv) household lands, both allocated forest land and areas at the base of the slopes where houses and gardens would be built. Permanent food crops could only be farmed on the unallocated alluvial terraces, located between the paddy fields and allocated primary forests. All cultivation, hunting and gathering were strictly forbidden on other kinds of land and farmers were only permitted to use their allocated forest land for forest and fruit tree plantations (Boissau et al. 2001). Access to sloping lands Ignoring the strict rules regarding the four above-mentioned land types, farmers first worked on land that had not yet been allocated (pastures, protected forests, zones at the base of the slopes), and only then on their forest land. • While unallocated land played a relatively small role in Tày production, it was essential for the struggling Dao households (Type Va), who relied on upland cultivation. To limit the number of swidden fields on allocated lands, Dao farmers turned to:

17


(i) communal pasture lands. In Ban Cuon, sloping land crops developed intensively in zones initially set aside for animal pasture. In 1999, approximately 60% of households were using pasture lands for upland rice cultivation. In sanctioning the expansion of pasture land, local authorities were effectively authorizing swidden crops. Access to these lands seemed to follow no particular rule: the land could be cultivated even without authorization from the village head. (ii) land in other villages or communes. In 1999, ten Ban Cuon families farmed land outside of Ngoc Phai. Authorities of the neighboring communes eventually put an end to these slash-and-burn practices after several disputes between the Tày proprietors and Dao “occupants.” That said, a few isolated land transactions did take place between farmers and neighboring villages. One Dao farmer “borrowed” a plot of land that had been used in the previous year by another Dao farmer who had decided to abandon it. We came across only one case of a sloping land purchase over the course of our research. The farmer in question purchased for 800,000 VND a swidden plot of some 3,000 m² from a Tày farmer of a neighboring commune who had been using the land. Renting and tenant farming do not exist in the uplands. Several farming • Allocated lands. approaches were observed on allocated lands: (i) A farmer burns a single plot, out of sight from forest wardens (not visible from the road); (ii) Beneath the authority of a forest and fruit tree plantation program (national reforestation program 327, international development projects), some plots are cleared completely, allowing several years of cropping between the young trees, (iii) A farmer burns wherever he determines that the soil is well adapted to his crop choice, without regard to the forest wardens. In the interest of supporting agriculture, fines are kept relatively low. (iv) Since 1999, several poor Ban Cuon farmers requested special permission to engage in slash-and-burn practices on their allocated land, as a last resort to feed their households. After an examination of land criteria (i.e. paddy field area) possessed by the requester, the commune’s forest wardens

either granted or denied the farmer this right. The forest wardens then regulated the practice, indicated the area and location of the burn.

5.3. Production system classification The Ngoc Phai production systems were classified based on household land access and associated land use strategies (Table 3). This classification integrates farming system dynamics and the observed accumulation mechanisms (Figure 5). a) Monetary valuing of the products of agriculture and animal husbandry At the level of the commune, the main commercialized vegetable products were rice, soybeans and maize. In Ban Cuon village, upland rice was never sold by farmers who did not possess paddy fields. In contrast, for the owners of the largest paddy fields, the sale of upland race was a regular supplemental agricultural profit. Crops with harvests spread across the year, like cassava or sweet potato vine, were generally grown to feed livestock. The sale of animals was also an important source of revenue. All households possessed a number of pigs. Depending on the role of the particular practice (breeder-fattener or fattener), this breeding led to revenue that was either immediate or spread across the year. In Ban Cuon, Dao farmers were able to raise funds to repurchase paddy fields from founding Tày families by selling their buffaloes. Ownership of a significant amount of livestock (a minimum of 5 head) at the time when the first paddy fields were being sold by the Tày was the determinant of differentiation in Ban Cuon. The raising of large ruminants (buffaloes and cattle) was an important means of capitalization and long term saving, while pig farming was a medium term source of income for timely investment needs (expenses related to festivals, chemical input purchases, etc.). b) Off-farm income In Ngoc Phai, the majority of farmers engaged in off-farm practices. The time given to these practices depended on the household type. The households that made


significant off-farm investments (in time and labor) were primarily: - households with little or no paddy field area - households with a high laborer/cultivated area ratio - households with access to natural resources. • Forest resource use. The primary nonagricultural activity was the gathering of forest products (Types II, III and IV). Firewood was sold to the district administrative center. Many commune youths made use of timber to build houses, the revenue per laborer on such an activity rising as high as 2 million VND. Bamboo was harvested and sold by households located near bamboo forests. All such sales required salaried labor that would then take a cut from sale profits. The allocation of forest land allowed the owner of bamboo forests to make economic gains without the burden of additional work. Rattan gathering was also very profitable (5,000 VND for a vine 3 m high and with a 5 cm diameter): a laborer could make 300,000 VND in a year of rattan sales. Bamboo shoots were collected primarily for household consumption, but farmers selling them along the roadside were also able to generate modest but reliable revenues during the three or four months of production. The sale of certain wild animals (snakes, turtles, rodents) was an immediate if unpredictable source of significant revenue. • Commerce. Village shops fall into two categories: (i) households without paddy fields, able to consecrate a large part of their time to commerce (Type Vb), and

18

(ii) households with surplus labor forces and sufficient capital to open a shop while pursuing their farming activities (Type III). It is often the elderly women who take care of the shop. • Other activities. Non-agricultural revenue can also come from providing services, such as house construction, brick-making, or motorcycle taxi. c) Credit Although infrequent, loans can represent a significant piece of household monetary resources. Loans are most often taken out to purchase pigs, buffaloes, fruit trees and chemical inputs. They have three possible sources: - state institutions: the bank of agriculture (1993), or the bank of the poor (1995). To acquire credit from these institutions, a farmer has to make a request to community authorities, with the village chief as an intermediary. The authorities verify the “social” criteria, or the creditworthiness of the borrower, who must own some means of repayment (buffaloes, pigs, motorcycle, etc.). As such, state loans primarily benefit those households with access to credit. - international cooperation projects: the Red River Program (1994) and the Finland Forestry Project (1997) specifically target poor households who are not eligible for state loans. - personal loans. Either the farmer asks a family member for an interest-free loan or makes a request to another farmer or household. In this last case, interest rates are often quite high (3% per month).

19


Capital Type IV

Ricefield purchase

Plantations Fruit trees Buffalo/Cattle raising for sale

Terrace construction Movement to doublecropping

Type III Anti-erosive systems on slopes

Type VI Corn + pigs

Non-farming practices Upland rice

Corn, cash crops

Type Va

Type II

Type I

Annual cash crops on ricefields (spring soya, winter potato, etc.)

Perrenial plantations Government programs

Type Vb Lowland rice selfsufficiency threshold

Ricefield area Figure 12: Options for income generation based on the accumulation of household possessions

6 to 7 members 3 laborers

Family composition

Sale of swidden production Annual buffalo sale (no. of heads) Type of pig raising (no. of heads) Size of perennial plantations Importance of non-farming activities Net revenue / laborer / year (x 1000 VND) (% agricultural revenue)

Rice self-sufficiency

Production strategy

Allocated forest area

Paddy area / laborer (m )

2

1.5 ha

6 to 7 members 3 laborers reclamation and purchase 500-700

founding families

III

maize no (2) intensive (2) medium important 4,270 (80)

unimportant 4,820 (100)

self-sufficient

3,020 (60)

important

no no (2) intensive (4) small

rice shortages

V

VI

10-12 ha

700-1200

purchase in 1993

6 to 7 members 3 laborers

4,050 (75)

important

upland rice yes (5 – 7) semi-intensive (8 –12) large

self-sufficient

2,240 (Va = 85, Vb = 45)

no no (0 - 3) light (Va, 1–6) intensive (Vb, 4-6) small unimportant (Va) important (Vb)

rice shortages

0 Dao (Va): 5-10 ha Tày (Vb): 1 ha Upland rice (Va), maize crops for pig raising (among the youth), significant wood harvesting

without paddy fields

4 to 7 members 2 to 3 laborers

2,590 (90)

unimportant

maize, upland rice no (2) intensive (3) medium

rice shortages

Primarily irrigated rice, maize crops associated with pig raising, some wood harvesting

1.5-3 ha

500-700

recent purchase

5 members 3 laborers

at the beginning of and during the collectivization

IV

Irrigated and upland Primarily rice Irrigated rice, pig rice, annual sales of a farming, maize sales, raising associated buffalo (cull), pig pig raising associated with maize crops. raising, bamboo with maize crops, Significant revenue harvesting wood harvesting from wood harvesting

1.5-3 ha

1500-2000

inheritance

II descendants of founding families 4 to 5 members 2 laborers

Primarily rice farming, lowlands intensification through soybeans, cassava, pisciculture. Annual sale of buffalo (cull), pig raising (fertilizer) associated with maize crops self-sufficient/ surpluses no yes (6) intensive (3 – 6) large

3-5 ha

2000-2400

reclamation

founding families

Arrival date

Means of access to paddy fields

I

Farm type

Table 3: Main characteristics of identified farm types and their frequency in Ngoc Phai


6. Conclusion: co-viability of crop, cattle and forest systems The major environmental crisis announced at the beginning of the 1980s by researchers working in Bac Kan did not take place (Bal et al., 1997). However, after almost ten years of increased slash-and-burn practices and unsustainable resource use, the situation became particularly critical. Since then, successive land reforms dramatically transformed farmers’ practices on sloping lands. Short rotation slash-and-burn systems were replaced by more sedentary crop systems in the Tày villages of Ngoc Phai commune. However, the effects of these changes on forest regeneration in zones far from villages are not yet visible on land use maps. We have seen that the problems tied to lowland access disparities continue to persist. Farmers are approaching crisis situations in a number of villages. Husson et al. (2001) described the chain of factors leading to soil deterioration and decreasing productivity of upland crops at the level of the individual plot. Animal husbandry in particular takes a serious toll on forest regeneration, and consequently, on the fertility restoration of fallow plots. We have demonstrated that the search for solutions to such problems described at the level of the land plot cannot be addressed at the same scale. New modes of herd management and animal husbandry need to be found at the level of the interface between crop systems, animal husbandry and agroforestry. These three elements of the agrarian system are so tightly intertwined that it would be impossible to intervene in one of these without interacting with the others. Large ruminants, upland crops and forests exist on the same spatial units. The viability of this composite system depends greatly on the spatial organization of the subsystems and their underlying modes of social organization.

Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to Paul Novosad for translating this paper from French.

21

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