Farming systems analysis of farm-households at Dinh Hoa district, the northern uplands of Vietnam

Results had shown two unique farm household ways in coping with food security. In remote areas, "in situ food security" with food crop production was the dominant practice. In areas where access to road and market exists farming orientation shifts into "food security by money" with fruits and tea as dominant crops. However, the change in farming systems was impaired by traditional habits such as practice of free range animal raising. Farming systems involving food crops such as upland rice, cassava, and field crop- field crop sequence showed the highest rate of soil erosion. Growing food crops on the slope greater than 10 degrees caused serious soil erosion. While growing tea and orchard which provides high soil canopy cover protects soil from erosion. However, farmer's recognition of soil erosion was low. Very few soil conservation practices had been adopted. Richer diversity was found in the remote region such as Reg. 1 while more specialized farming was observed in Reg. 2. Difficult physical condition pushed farmers toward higher diversity as an adaptation measure. Under homogenous physical condition, farmers tended to adopt specialized farming since diversity was found to have negative effect on income. The estimated water requirement showed that majority of annual crop farming systems suffered water deficiency, particularly in April and Oct. Water use efficiency was highest in permanent crops such as in tea and fruit trees. Nitrogen was identified as the growth limiting factor in the uplands. In farming system involving food crops, the loss via economic products ranged from 27.3 to 60 percent, via soil erosion from 13.6-42.5 percent, and via crop residues (if residues are burned or removed) from 16.4-35.4 percent. This proved that application of soil conservation practices, residue recycling, and the complement of fertilizers are necessary to maintain crop productivity and soil nutrients. A balanced status of nitrogen was also found in farming system that included legumes. The factors that positively affect household income including areas of pond, irrigated, upland, livestock, off-farm activities, family labor, cash availability, and information access. The on-farm income was affected positively by the area of grown crops, pond, livestock, family labor force and cash availability. It was negatively affected by off-farm activities and the household's income diversity. Logit analysis showed that the educational level of family head and family cash availability positively affected the adoption of fish raising. The adoption of rice-rice-winter crop was influenced by the area of irrigated rainfed land, and farm location. Extension roles, family local and area of garden played positively in farmer's adoption of growing fruit tree on their garden. The area of irrigated land, however, had negative effects. For upland field, adoption of tea growing was negatively affected by the area of garden, irrigated land, and off-farm activities while the area of upland field gave opportunity for growing it. Analysis of farm management efficiency by using Multiple Goal Linear Programming tool revealed that most household reached only half of their optimum attainable income. This revealed that the potential or opportunities of farming are still very high. Further studies on proper arrangement of the farming systems are necessary before they are adopted by farmers