5.3 The people in the buffer zone
5.3.4 People’s livelihood activities
The analysis herein focuses on the proportion of the main occupations of the interviewed households. Leones and Feldman (1998) divided income activities into three categories: (1) On-farm which means that income is generated from own-account farming; (2) Off-farm where wage or exchange labour on other farms within agriculture; (3) Non-farm: referring
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to non-agricultural income sources. Table 4 summarizes the details of employed labourers in surveyed households.
For on-farm activities there are about 73.3 percent of total labourers who have been working on agriculture in which 43.4 percent accounts for cultivation, 27.8 percent for cultivation and animal husbandry, and 2.1 percent for fishery. The types of crops cultivated are rice, fruit, cashew, cash crop, and forest tree. Rice remains the main crop cultivated in the village. Types of animal husbandry are cows, buffalos, pigs, and poultry.
Animal husbandry is not developed because ploughing buffalos are replaced by tractors and poultry are used only for household consumption. Kinh people have raised pigs and cows through the support of projects and banks. Regarding 18.7 percent of total labourers have worked on off-farm activities, for example, clear of wild grass for cultivation, spray pesticide for plants or harvest rice for local farms. Besides, labourers have been to Binh Phuoc province for collecting cashew nut, special Stieng people. Meanwhile, on non-farm activities, only eight percent of labourers work on these. The specific activities are small businesses inside and in neighbouring villages, also include officers, bricklayers and brocade weavers.
Table 4: Occupation of surveyed households
People Groups (%) Items
Chau Ma (n=50)
Kinh (n=50)
Stieng (n=50)
Total sample (%)
(N=150)
1. On-farm 79.0 73.9 67.4 73.3
a. Cultivation 51.7 35.1 43.0 43.4
b. Cultivation & animal husbandry 23.8 37.3 23.1 27.8
c. Fishery 3.5 1.5 1.3 2.1
2. Off-farm 16.8 10.4 27.8 18.7
3. Non-farm 4.2 15.7 4.6 8.0
a. Small business 1.4 6.7 2.0 3.3
b. Worker/Officer 1.4 5.3 1.3 2.6
c. Others 1.4 3.7 1.3 2.1
Source: Household survey, Tran Duc Luan, 2006
Discussion with key informants reveals that there is a difference in awareness between Kinh people and indigenous people in terms of their preference towards livelihood activities. For instance, Kinh people have a trend to concentrate on agricultural production to serve a market demand. They know to calculate the cost-benefit of their activities as well as have the knowledge to apply technology while Chau Ma and Stieng people are not clearly adept on these matters.
Kinh people: Group discussions indicate that average productivity of rice is about three tons per ha per crop. After cost production recovery of 4.5 million VND/ha/crop, income per ha per crop of rice is estimated to be 1.5 million VND. Most of the rice fields can only cultivate one crop per year due to lack of water on dry season. After harvests, people would sell their produce at about one-third of crop yield to pay expenditures while the remaining yield is stored for household consumption. Corn and bean areas are decreasing due to lack of water and pests. As a result, about 90 percent of surveyed
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households stopped cultivating these cash crops. For industrial tree, nearly two-thirds of cashew area had just been planted. The remaining cashew area appears to be susceptible to low productivity yield if people won’t invest in fertilizers and pesticides. This would be one ton per ha or two tons per ha which is short of expected estimated yield. In terms of animal husbandry, the people raise local white pigs on average two heads per household.
By-products from agriculture are used as feeds for pigs. After six months, the average weight for selling is about 60 kg per head. Chicken and duck are just for household consumption. Cow production is strongly developed through the aid of Vietnam Bank for agriculture and rural development and Forest Protection and Rural Development Project.
Box 1. Why do Kinh people not enter the park for forest product collection?
One Kinh respondent said, “Most of the people in Phuoc Sang area were given a loan to raise cows according to production groups. Every group has seven to ten households.
Every household was given ten million VND with interest rate of 0.45% and payback period of three years. The interest was to be paid after three months to the leader of the production group who in turn payment shall be remitted to the bank staff. Cost of breeding cow was about seven to eight million VND per head. Each cow is required to breed at least two cows or more. At present, the cows are healthy and strong. If this trend continues, three years later, the income from two bred calves will already cover the loan and the people can have a profit from the mother cow. This is one of reasons why we all concentrate to agricultural activities rather than enter Cat Tien National Park as was the case in the past”.
Source: In-depth interview, Tran Duc Luan, 2006
Stieng people: Stieng people cultivate two rice crops per year with water from Vam Ho dam. The average productivity of rice is about two tons per year. Only few households can achieve three tons per ha per crop as result of new technology application. Cashew have been planted on the hills without fertilizer with an average productivity of 1.25 tons per ha per year. In animal husbandry, cows are raised more commonly than buffaloes while chicken is raised for family or household consumption. On off-farm activities, people labour during rice harvesting season (70% of female labourers; 30% of male labourers) with a wage rate of 25 thousand VND coupled with a lunch meal per day per labour. The majority of male labourers spray pesticide and clear wild grass to prepare the land for cultivation. They are paid a wage of 30 thousand VND per day. The group discussion revealed that Stieng people often enter the park to collect bamboo shoots, rattans, medicinal trees and other forest products. Respondents said that sometimes Stieng people enter the park to hunt Java mouse deer and tortoise or come to Da Pan Stream to catch fish. Usually, it takes ten hours (from 7:00AM to 5:00PM) to complete the entire activity of entering the park and conduct its associated livelihood activities. According to the informants, Stieng people enter the park less than Chau Ma people. This finding has been crosschecked and validated in the household survey and in-depth interviewing with some key informants.
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Table 5: Income per capita per month of the surveyed household in 2005
Unit: 1000 VND Groups
Chau Ma
(n=50) Kinh (n=50) Stieng
(n=50)
Total sample (N=150) Items
Mean Std. D Mean Std. D Mean Std. D Mean Std. D %
1. On-farm 135 94 166 155 155 119 151 58 58
2. Off-farm 38 58 35 64 52 77 42 67 16
3. Non-farm 63 110 131 158 12 21 68 121 26
4. Total
income/capita/month (4) = (1) + (2) + (3)
236 120 332 170 219 95 260 140 10
0 Source: Household survey, Tran Duc Luan, 2006
Note: - Income on this table is not including income from forest products.
VND: Vietnamese Dong (used at US$1=VND 15,800)
Chau Ma people: They have been cultivating one variety of rice in a flat field and planting cashew in the garden house and hills. The rice yield is two tons per ha per crop.
After covering its productive cost, 500 thousand VND per ha can be earned. Brocade weaving is a traditional handicraft for female Chau Ma people. However, the number of labourers who join this work is limited due to lack of market demand. People get loans or enter the park to collect forest products for food and firewood. The group discussion revealed that in the past, Chau Ma people often entered the park to collect bamboo shoots from July to August, especially women. Table 5 shows that income per capita per month of Kinh people is highest with 332 thousand VND, while Chau Ma people has on the average of 236 thousand VND and Stieng people with 219 thousand VND. The total income is the sum of all earnings from farm, off-farm and nfarm sources with on-farm activities bringing in the main income for all people which are estimated to be 58 percent of the total income.
The average income of Kinh group from on-farm sources is not different from the two remaining groups. Firstly, the distribution of income from rice production is not high despite the relative good productivity (in comparison to Chau Ma and Stieng people).
Secondly, Chau Ma and Stieng’s cashew harvesting is on time with 1.5 times the area covered compared to the Kinh people. Thirdly, the majority of Kinh’s fruit and cashew area as well as its cow production are in its initial investment phase. Hence at present, income from on-farm source is equal among the three groups. However, in the next three years, there will be a wide disparity of income between groups as a result of increasing income that will favour the Kinh people. Stieng people compared with the other two groups have earned more money from off-farm activities due to a higher number of labourers working on these activities. On the other hand, Kinh people have high income from non-farm sources generated from small business, wage labour and remittance from relatives working outside.
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