Since the
‘80s, Vietnam has been a food-sufficient nation, even outpacing the
agricultural growth of such countries as the Philippines, which ended up
importing rice from the smaller socialist country. But the Vietnamese government
now intends to overhaul its land laws, essentially aping the flawed,
investment-friendly strategy that has made the Philippines such an agricultural
and economic disaster. What’s going on here?
By SHIRLEY
NUEVO, Ibon Features
What awaits socialist Vietnam in
a highly globalized economic environment?
Since the start of the doi moi
(renovation) in its agriculture sector in the ‘80s, Vietnam developed from
a food-deficit nation to one of Southeast Asia's most active food-exporting
countries. A key factor then was the country's agrarian-reform program and the
“cooperativization” of farm production. Now, socialist Vietnam is moving
toward a radical reform: opening up land control to foreigners.
The Vietnamese government
believes such a step would bring more investments into agriculture and pump up
the economy. But peasant groups within and outside Vietnam are wondering whether
the country is stepping into the right direction. Close comparison with the
Philippine situation, for instance, would prove that things might not turn out
as expected.
Land To Foreigners?
With the vigorous implementation
of capitalist reforms in the Vietnamese economy, such as legal guarantees to
foreign investments and the sale of government-owned assets, many foreigners
have been tempted to invest in a "renovated" socialist Vietnam.
Still, many remained unsatisfied.
Creditors and foreign investors have repeatedly criticized the government for
the slow pace of reforms. Many, in fact, have threatened to withdraw investments
from Vietnam. In a bold bid to keep investors, the government is staking its
lands via the new law.
Like its neighbor the
Philippines, Vietnam as yet does not allow foreigners to own land. But the setup
is bound to change as soon as Vietnam's legislature, the National Assembly,
passes the new land law anytime within the first half of the year.
Under the proposed law, foreign
investors in Vietnam will be allowed to buy land-use rights from government or
commission Vietnamese farmers to produce specified crops by forming joint
venture agreements with them. Foreign partners are expected to provide technical
and financial assistance, while local farmers will offer their land and provide
labor.
The proposed law will virtually
transfer land control from farmers to foreign agro-investors. Similar
arrangements are common in the Philippines, where the contract-growing scheme
has been widely practiced in the last two decades.
Contract growing in the
Philippines is an arrangement in which an agriculture-based foreign company
transfers farm-production process to local independent farmers or farmers'
groups.
In the prevailing
contract-growing practice in the Philippines, the foreign partner normally
specifies which crop to plant, impose a standard quantity and quality and
dictate the price of the crop.
Contract growing has been widely
practiced in large plantations, particularly in Mindanao and the Visayas. Local
peasant groups like the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP, or Peasant
Movement of the Philippines) criticize the practice for driving many farmers to
bankruptcy and perpetuating unfair labor practices against farmhands and
agricultural workers.
Recently, the KMP shared the
views of a visiting Vietnamese economist that the proposed land law in Vietnam
may bring in more adverse affects rather than boost the country's agriculture.
In a series of lectures given at
the University of the Philippines in Diliman in Quezon City early this month,
Dr. Bui Tat Thang, an economics professor from Hanoi University, attributed
Vietnam's ascent in the ‘90s as one of the region's biggest rice-exporting
countries to the cooperative program.
In 1996, Vietnam's agriculture
sector comprised 29 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), much bigger
than the Philippines’ 22 percent. In the same year, Vietnam's rice production
reached 28 million metric tons, more than double the Philippines' 11 million
metric tons. This despite the fact that agricultural land in the Philippines,
which comprises 31 percent of the total land area, is far bigger than the total
agricultural land in Vietnam, which comprises only 22 percent of its total land
area.
Vietnam's land reform and
agriculture production policy spelled the big difference, Dr. Thang said.
Although both countries were deeply entrenched in feudalism as a result of
western colonization --Vietnam by the French for almost a century and the
Philippines by the Spaniards and Americans for almost 400 years -- Vietnam was
able to free itself from the clutches of feudalism much earlier.
Land in Vietnam is owned by the
state. The assumption to power of the Communist Party, first in Northern Vietnam
in 1954 and later on including South Vietnam in 1976, boosted land reform at a
vigorous pace all over the country.
Vietnam's land-reform program,
implemented in a span of six years in the North and five years in the South, has
effectively ensured land for every Vietnamese tiller. Private ownership of land
was eventually abolished and instead, the people were allowed to secure land-use
rights for a specified period.
This is a stark contrast to the
dismal seven decades of land -reform program of the Philippines, starting under
the American colonial government. Up to now, the biggest land parcels in the
Philippines are owned and controlled by less than 5% of the entire population.
Yet despite his country's
impressive agriculture performance, Dr. Thang said the Vietnamese government is
open to foreign investments in agriculture. But he was quick to point out that
not all Vietnamese, particularly farmers, were as interested.
The Vietnamese government's
eagerness to tempt foreigners to invest in agriculture is driven by the desire
to produce more for the international market and to modernize further its
agriculture sector through technology transfer, according to Dr. Thang.
Vietnam's agriculture directly
employs about a third of its entire population. Undeniably, should foreigners be
allowed to directly buy land-use rights from the government or form
joint-venture agreements, the effects on Vietnamese peasants would be great.
The passage of the law would also
entail the abandonment of the impressive gains of socialist Vietnam's
land-reform program. In the long run, the opening of land control to foreigners
would pose a serious threat to food security since foreign investors will be
more interested in producing export-viable crops than staple crops.
From a food-sufficient country in
the early ‘60s, the Philippines had been transformed into a grains-deficit
country, particularly in the last two decades as transnational corporations and
big agribusiness for export took over the agriculture sector.
Narrowing markets and competition
for foreign investors among developing nations have intensified as a result of
globalization of land rights, or the opening up of trade and investment in
agriculture. Poor agriculture-based nations – “socialist” and
non-socialist economies alike -- are clearly the biggest casualties of this
free-trade setup. #