US embassy cable - 03HANOI752

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 HANOI 000752 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR DRL and EAP/BCLTV 
 
USDA/FAS for ICD and G&F 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, SOCI, SNAR, EAGR, VM, ETMIN 
SUBJECT:  Turning Highlanders into Rice Farmers 
 
 
1.  (U)  Summary:  Many efforts to improve the living 
standards of highland ethnic minorities center on 
transforming their way of life from slash-and-burn 
agriculture to sedentary farming, particularly production of 
rice and, increasingly, cash crops.  This agricultural 
transformation complements GVN attempts to integrate 
minorities into the country's economic and political fabric, 
provide better services in remote areas, and eliminate opium 
production.  Turning highland minorities such as the Hmong 
and the Dao in Lao Cai and Yen Bai provinces into irrigated 
rice farmers more closely resembling the majority Kinh is 
likely overall well-meaning as well as yet another way to 
cement the "national great unity bloc."  End summary. 
 
Provincial Overview 
------------------- 
 
2.  (U)  According to Lao Cai provincial director of Ethnic 
Minority Affairs Lu Huy Chi, about 70 percent of this 
northwestern province's 600,000 residents are members of one 
of 17 different ethnic minorities.  Provincial 
implementation of central government programs for minorities 
and remote communities has been crucial in cutting the 
poverty rate from around 26 percent in 2000 to the current 
19 percent, Chi claimed.  He and his colleagues indicated 
that almost the entire budget for these programs comes from 
the central government. 
 
3.  (U)  Yen Bai Province's head of Ethnic Minority Affairs, 
Duong Van Vanh, separately confirmed to poloffs that 
minorities make up slightly over half of the province's 
710,000 residents.  Tay and Thai people comprise about half 
the minorities and tend to live in the lowlands with the 
majority Kinh people.  Dao and Hmong account for most of the 
upland minorities; others include Muong, Nung, and Cao Lan. 
Except for the Hmong concentrated in the western portion of 
the province, minorities are scattered throughout the 
province.  Per capita annual income is about three million 
VND (less than $200) and half that in remote areas.  Almost 
15 percent of households suffer from periodic hunger, with 
the percentage twice as high in remote areas.  About 90 
percent of funds for development in the province come 
directly from the central government, Vanh added. 
 
Agricultural Transformation 
--------------------------- 
 
4.  (U)  The Hmong, Dao, and some other ethnic minority 
groups traditionally practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, 
according to authorities in both provinces.  With 
significant GVN assistance, authorities claimed, members of 
these minority groups had begun to cease these practices and 
to become proficient at creating rice terraces and growing 
irrigated rice.  Various GVN provisions -- such as the 
centrally-funded Program 135 for mountainous and ethnic 
minority areas -- provide subsidies and material support for 
building materials as well as some agricultural inputs such 
as improved seeds, fertilizer, and insecticides.  Other 
infrastructure projects have built irrigation systems, 
access roads, and markets.  Provincial branches of the 
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development have 
reportedly targeted increased agricultural extension 
services to help swidden farmers learn sedentary 
agriculture. 
 
Community-Level Implementation in Lao Cai 
----------------------------------------- 
 
5.  (U)  Lao Cai Province's Sapa District, now one of 
Vietnam's main tourist destinations, traditionally produced 
opium.  Major efforts over the past decade have reduced this 
cultivation to almost nothing, according to district 
officials.   The challenge has been to finding suitable cash 
crops to replace opium; new cash crops brought in only a 
part of the lost income from opium.  Officials indicated 
that government subsidies and temporary employment on 
infrastructure project construction have contributed much of 
the rest of the lost income. 
 
6.  (U)  Sapa District People's Committee Chairman Hoang Kim 
Thai and other Sapa officials explained further that 
"community-based" development efforts to spread the benefits 
of tourism more evenly throughout the district and to 
improve rural incomes had given local people a fuller sense 
of participation in development efforts.  They described 
local people as very concerned about income generation; in 
lieu of opium, they increasingly recognized tourism as a 
relatively easy source of income. 
 
7.  (U)  Tourism promotion has also gone hand-in-hand with 
efforts to discourage slash-and-burn farming, which leaves 
the land scarred and is less and less sustainable with 
larger populations.  Instead, authorities are touting 
irrigated rice cultivation on terraces, supplemented by 
fruit trees, soybeans, and other crops.  Officials were 
quick to point out "new" rice terraces and fruit tree groves 
on mountain slopes outside Sapa.  Commune-level officials 
claimed efforts to stop swidden practices had already made a 
lot of headway compared to four or five years before, when 
people used to "burn freely."  Even so, many fires were 
still burning on the slopes on Sapa Valley during poloffs' 
February visit, and there were recent signs of slash-and- 
burn practices in Lao Cai's Bao Thang and Bao Yen districts 
as well.  Some small fires burning near Sapa had also spread 
into reforestation zones. 
 
Infrastructure and Services 
--------------------------- 
 
8.  (U)  Irrigation systems are critical to make rice 
farming really worthwhile in these mountainous areas, 
according to officials; without irrigation, only one rice 
crop can be grown per year.  Corn and soybeans are the 
favored dry season crops, but do not yield as much income or 
food as irrigated rice.  As yet, irrigation systems cover 
relatively little upland area; in Yen Bai Province's Viet 
Cuong commune, only 170 of 714 hectares of agricultural 
land, for example, or a little more than 100 hectares of 
over 5,000 total hectares in Lao Cai Province's So Pa 
commune.  Rugged terrain and scarce funding have limited the 
average size of irrigation projects to about 20 hectares in 
Viet Cuong and roughly half that in So Pa.  Furthermore, 
Program 135 -- the source of much infrastructure funding in 
upland areas -- finances only small-scale irrigation 
projects. 
 
9.  (U)  Officials in both provinces told poloffs that 
agriculture extension efforts centered primarily on 
irrigated rice and fruit trees.  Agricultural extension 
workers concentrated on introducing new varieties of rice 
and teaching farmers how to use the fertilizers and 
insecticides supplied by the GVN free or below cost, they 
noted.  Many Hmong were not experts at rice culture crops, 
authorities in both provinces said, but were learning 
quickly.  Lao Cai district-level officials mentioned that 
marketable flower production remained under consideration, 
but more improvements in the road system would be needed to 
make this more feasible.  Some reforestation and forest 
protection efforts are also underway, more noticeably in Yen 
Bai than in Lao Cai. 
 
10.  (U)  Lao Cai and Yen Bai officials reviewed other 
benefits ethnic minority farmers may receive in addition to 
free or subsidized agricultural inputs.  According to 
authorities, all of the farmers in So Pa and Viet Cuong 
communes have already received long-term (usually 25-30 
years) land use certificates for the land they currently 
cultivate.  All of So Pa's residents were free from land-use 
taxes, and only a handful of Viet Cuong's populace paid land- 
use taxes, according to their respective commune heads. 
Residents of poor and remote communes may also receive low 
interest credit to buy equipment under Program 135.  Yen Bai 
Province's Vanh further claimed that all residents in the 
province's 70 poorest communes now receive free medical 
treatment.  He added that the GVN even subsidized the price 
of salt and cooking oil so that they cost no more in rural 
areas than in town markets. 
 
Resettlement 
------------ 
 
11.  (U)  Promoting sedentary agriculture has gone in 
parallel with efforts to move people from widely scattered 
homes into villages, again following the ethnic Kinh norm in 
Vietnam.  Authorities stressed that such concentrations make 
provision of education, health care, electricity, access to 
markets, electricity, and other services much easier.  They 
denied forced resettlement, instead stressing the use of the 
major incentive of land use certificates.  However, the 
scarcity of level ground complicated the construction of 
large settlements, Yen Bai's Vanh admitted, with most level 
ground already in use for rice paddies. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
12.  (U)  Critics of the GVN are quick to assume sinister 
motives from many GVN programs related to ethnic minorities, 
especially anything that disrupts traditional practices or 
"infringes" upon the "sovereignty" of mountainous areas 
where ethnic minorities had lived with little central 
government oversight for hundreds of years.  After meeting 
with these provincial and district officials, we are more 
inclined to credit officials with largely good faith efforts 
to improve local living standards for these poorest of the 
poor, who happen to be ethnic minorities.   At the same 
time, these expanded roles and presence by officials are 
part and parcel of larger GVN and CPV efforts to ensure 
solid control throughout the country, thereby, they hope, 
diminishing the possibility of what officials claim are 
"plots" by "hostile forces" aimed at sabotaging "national 
solidarity." 
BURGHARDT