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Northern provinces of Vietnam suffer from environmental problems such as deforestation, soil degradation, and loss of biodiversity. As a result, the livelihoods of most agricultural households are unsustainable. Moreover, the current land use practices are also producing negative externalities that adversely affect the downstream areas. Deforestation and slash-and-burn cultivation techniques are blamed by some governmental organizations as the main causes for the problem. A mix of incentives (generally subsidies), technical assistance (usually improved and sustainable agricultural practices), and regulation have been used to address the problem. While some progress can be observed in terms of reforestation, many agricultural households are still employing unsustainable agricultural practices that will in the medium term affect their own livelihoods. Land use practices, which would bring about environmental benefits, include forest plantation, agro-forestry, tree-based land use alternatives and agro-ecologically sound practices such as conservation agriculture (Gouyon, 2002). However, the environmental services these land use provide, i.e. watershed services, biodiversity conservation and carbon storage are usually un-rewarded and only indirectly connected to economic activities (Bui Dung The et al., 2004). Payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes present a new approach that focuses directly on creating a conditional benefit transfer between the upland providers of environmental services and the downstream beneficiaries. Such schemes can take the advantage of upland-lowland interactions in generating environmental benefits while improving the livelihoods of upland farmers. The past few years have witnessed a surge of interest in the development of PES schemes in Asia. In Vietnam, while some projects using the conceptual framework of PES are being initiated in the central and southern part of the country (e.g. WWF, 2007), no PES schemes are currently being implemented in the upper catchment areas of Northern Vietnam (Wunder et al., 2005). However, the Vietnamese Government expressed recently its intention to start such a scheme to protect fragile upper-catchments whose degradation is causing problems on hydro-electric infrastructures. Households in upper-catchments have unequal access to natural resources. The upper-catchments are generally composed of narrow valley bottoms, where irrigated rice fields are found and surrounding sloping land where upland rice, maize and cassava are the principal crops. The differential access to these two types of land has some important consequences on household farming practices and livelihood strategies. The main objective of this paper is to review the potential responses of the different types of households to a PES scheme that would reward farmers to set aside some land for forestry projects. Subsequently, we will investigate if poorly endowed farmers would gain from participating in such a scheme. While, some analytical work has already given general results (Zilberman et al., 2006), we would look at the specificity of PES schemes targeted at agricultural households of the upper-catchments in Northern Vietnam. The proposed paper is organized in two parts. The first part proposes a typology of farmers of two typical upper-catchments of the northern province of Yen Bai, Vietnam. The second, using a simplified farm model analyses how households with different endowments would respond to such a PES scheme. The Sai Luong and the Pan Cang catchments were selected for their contrasted water availability and access to markets. The villagers of the Sai Luong catchment, in Nam Bung commune, share a relatively large area of flat valley bottom where rice paddies are grown. Most farmers do not have access to the input or output markets. On the other hand, the villagers of the Pang Cang catchment, in Suoi Giang commune, have only access to sloping land. They are now increasingly making use of w

Correspondance: affholder@cirad.fr; International audience; Substantial initiatives are under way in the tropical world to develop and promote direct-seeding mulch-based cropping systems (DMC) in order to reduce soil erosion and improve crop nutrient and water balances. DMC have been adopted by large-scale mechanized farmers, especially in America and Australia, but seldom by resource-poor farmers in the developing world. This study was conducted in Vietnam with the aim of evaluating the feasibility of farmers’ implementing DMC in a mountainous area. The method involved simulation of rational households maximizing their income subject to food security constraints and availability of resources. It generated insight into why farmers of a small region were reluctant to adopt DMC due to the extra labor and input required to implement these techniques during the first years, which hampers their economic performance. In another region, under different biophysical and economic environmental conditions, the study showed that DMC were more likely to be adopted provided that possible constraints at the community level are overcome. The method also allowed us to discuss the types of technical improvements that would make DMC more attractive to farmers. For most farm types, labor required by mulch establishment would have to be reduced by more than 30%. This would mean spreading much less biomass than the 7 t ha−1 currently necessary, compromising the weed-control function of mulch. This would be technically feasible only by using herbicides but this would not be economically sound since it would increase cash requirements. The study showed that subsidies of 50 to more than 200 USD ha−1 were necessary to enable the conversion of all conventionally managed sloping land into DMC in the simulations. These amounts are high relatively to gross margins (250–750 USD ha−1) under conventional management

L'histoire récente du Vietnam a été marquée par vingt dernières années de transition, passant d'une économie socialiste à une économie de marché. Dans le domaine agricole, les politiques récentes ont causés d'importants changements jusque dans des zones plus reculées comme les régions montagneuses du Nord du pays. Concernant l'irrigation, une diversification des modes de gestion des systèmes irrigués a été constatée dans le district de Van Chan, province de Yen Bai, situé dans ces zones de montagne. C'est l'histoire, mais aussi les contraintes du milieu naturel dans lequel évoluent les paysans qui déterminent la diversité des situations observées aujourd'hui. Une typologie des systèmes irrigués de montagne mettant en évidence cette diversité a été établie, élaborée en synthétisant l'étude de plusieurs systèmes irrigués du district de Van Chan :- Type 1 : Très petits systèmes irrigués de montagne gérés par un ou quelques foyers d'usagers ;- Type 2 : Petits systèmes irrigués de contrefort/bas de pentes gérés par le village ;- Type 3 : Moyens systèmes irrigués de plaine/fond de vallée décomposée en 3 sous-types en fonction des modes de gestion ; - Type 4 : Grands systèmes irrigués de grande plaine gérés par une entreprise étatique. La topographie est un critère déterminant de cette typologie, elle définit les principales tâches de la gestion de l'irrigation dans les montagnes (surveillance et entretien du réseau). Dans le district étudié, la gestion de l'irrigation est réalisée par différentes unités de gestion : les usagers, les chefs de villages, les comités populaires des communes ou une entreprise étatique. Au Vietnam, l'année 2008 a été marquée par plusieurs changements dans le domaine de la gestion de l'irrigation. Dans le district de Van Chan, les répercussions de ces grands changements ne peuvent encore être constatées, et laissent les paysans dans une situation encore instable.

In most upper-catchments of the Northern provinces of Vietnam current land uses are producing negative externalities that affect downstream areas. Slash-and-burn is often blamed as the main cause for the problem. Land uses that would bring about environmental benefits include tree-based land use alternatives and agro-ecological practices (e.g. direct-seeded mulching cropping systems). However, the environmental services these alternative land uses would provide are un-rewarded. Payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes present a new approach that focuses on creating a conditional benefit transfer between the upland providers of environmental services and the downstream beneficiaries. Agricultural households in upper-catchments have unequal access to natural resources, inducing contrasted farming practices and livelihood strategies. Our main objective was to evaluate the response of contrasted households to PES schemes that would reward them when they set aside some land for forestry projects. We looked at the specificity of PES schemes targeted at agricultural households of the upper-catchments in Northern Vietnam. Based on farm typologies developed earlier and using a simplified farm model, we analyzed how households with different endowments would respond to such PES schemes.

International audience; In Vietnam, agricultural extension has contributed to rural development and poverty alleviation over the past two decades of agricultural decollectivization, but it was not very effective in reducing disparities within farmer communities. The study examined how better interactions of extension services with other agencies and information sources may help marginal farmers in catching up with the general improvement of living conditions in a mountainous area in northern Vietnam. It combined three complementary viewpoints on this issue: that of the agricultural extension staff, that of farmers and that of development experts with a long working experience in the mountains of Vietnam. The analysis of existing structures and functions of the extension system revealed a number of obstacles to the participation of marginal farmers in extension programmes and helped to identify relevant domains of intervention.

Under the socialist system of collectivized agriculture, Viet Nam was a nation of chronic food shortages. Now, thanks to the dramatic doi moi economic reforms, Viet Nam has transformed itself into one of the world's leading exporters of rice, coffee, rubber, tea, and other agricultural products. This remarkable economic success has been concentrated in the lowland "rice bowl" regions, where farmers had the means to take advantage of the new doi moi policies. But in the northern mountains, poverty levels remain high and environmental degradation threatens the continued livelihoods of farmers. This volume presents a series of monographic and analytical studies vital to understanding the heterogeneity and potential of the mountains of northern Viet Nam. The Mountain Agrarian Systems Program (SAM) has used an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the needs and possibilities of farmers in the mountainous province of Bac Kan. The multiple-scale analysis showed that we need to create not only a spirit of "thinking globally and acting locally", but just as importantly, a spirit of "thinking locally and acting globally". The research provides a foundation for development practitioners and policy makers to identify the successes and failures of past policies and projects, and to target the groups most in need of development assistance today.

Farming has changed dramatically over the last fifty years in Ngoc Phai Commune, as in all of Bac Kan Province. Historically, ethnicity has long been the key determinant of access to land in northern Viet Nam uplands, and thus the determinant of farmers' agricultural practices. However, major external policy changes have periodically altered the environment in which farmers plan their livelihood strategies. Agricultural cooperatives were established throughout the country in the 1960.'s, and then dismantled some twenty years later, returning the land to individual family farms. During the cooperative period, all ethnic groups contributed to the intensification of paddyland productivity, thereby limiting agricultural pressure on the uplands. Nonetheless, rice production was not sufficient to cover food needs because of management problems in the cooperatives. Therefore, upland rice production became indispensable to meet the deficit in paddyland production. In the 1990s, the allocation first of paddyfields and later of uplands helped to slow the deterioration of the mountain ecosystem. However, the local reinterpretations of national land polities resulted in further inequalities, placing certain ethnic groups into extreme poverty and food insecurity. Tay farmers who could reclaim ancestral paddy lands were often privileged over the Dao, who traditionally had been shifting cultivators and thus were forced to return to slash-and-burn cultivation systems that were no longer sustainable under higher population pressure and a new institutional environment. Ethnicity was a major determinant of livelihood strategy in the past, and contributed greatly to the household differentiation that exists at present. However, distinctions among livelihood strategies can no longer be drawn along ethnic lines. Farmers of all ethnicities share the goal of attaining food security through paddyland rice production. Farmers who lack paddyland fields, whether Tay or Dao, are turning to shifting cultivation on the hillsides.

Animal husbandry is a component of almost all of the highly diverse production systems of the mountainous province of Bac Kan in northern Viet Nam. Some households only keep buffaloes for animal traction in lowland ricefields, whereas other households rely heavily upon income from cow and buffalo raising. Since decollectivization at the end of the 1980s, population in Bac Kan has grown substantially and the institutional and environmental contexts of agricultural production have changed dramatically, but animal husbandry systems have remained unchanged. Longstanding free-grazing practices are harmful to the natural resource base and engender conflicts among and within villages. This chapter describes an exhaustive study of 183 households in two villages in Ngoc Phai Commune that characterized household livestock strategies. The data from surveys on livestock practices were joined with a database on cropping systems and farm resource base. A typology was then developed, dividing farm households into ten types according to their crop-livestock strategies. The results are instructive in identifying household types as potential targets for organizational and technical innovations for improving croplivestock management. Innovations are proposed for systems in which animal husbandry activities complement crop production, rather than competing with it.