White Gold: The Commercialisation of Rice Farming in the Lower Mekong Basin

Edited by Rob Cramb

White Gold

The Commercialisation of

Rice Farming in the Lower Mekong Basin

White Gold: The Commercialisation of Rice

Farming in the Lower Mekong Basin

Rob Cramb

Editor

White Gold: The

Commercialisation of

Rice Farming in the

Lower Mekong Basin

ISBN 978-981-15-0997-1 ISBN 978-981-15-0998-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0998-8

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Editor

Rob Cramb

St Lucia, QLD, Australia

To Harry and Rose

vii

The development story told of Southeast Asia usually focuses on processes

of urbanisation, industrialisation, and rapid sectoral change, which have

propelled economic growth and thus delivered rising incomes, improving

standards of living, and declining poverty. Where, however, does farming

and agriculture, and in particular, the region’s signature crop, rice, fit into

this story? It is not a simple one, because many of the trends anticipated

by scholars and policy-makers have not materialised, while others have

worked out far more rapidly than anyone expected. Indeed, some of the

trends, or the absence of them, appear on first sight to be puzzlingly at odds.

Landholdings have not—generally—amalgamated into larger units of

production, which might drive labour productivity increases. Mechanisation

of some aspects of rice agriculture has proceeded rapidly, even in countries

that remain poor and seemingly in rural labour surplus. Questions and

concerns regarding food security stand alongside the disintensification of

some aspects of production, even land abandonment. Most rice farms are

sub-livelihood in size, but living standards in the countryside continue to

improve and poverty to decline. Parents make huge sacrifices to educate

their children so that they can escape the drudgery of rice farming, but

nonetheless stay rooted in—and to—their natal lands. Production is

increasingly commercialised, but farmers in some areas seem to adopt

semi-subsistence mindsets in their approach to rice farming.

This volume, then, comes at a particularly important moment in

Southeast Asia’s agrarian history. How do we interpret these contradictory

trends and how they might work out in the years to come? White Gold

considers these questions and issues in the context of the Lower Mekong

Foreword

viii FOREWORD

Basin. This region of one river and four countries encompasses more than

half a million square kilometres and a population of 66 million, produces

50 million tons of paddy rice each year, and contributes one-quarter of the

world’s rice exports. It is also home to some of the earliest rice-growing

cultures and the great rice-based civilisation of Angkor, and was a pivotal

area in the colonial rice export economy. Where better to consider the

past, present, and future of “white gold”?

Bristol, UK Jonathan Rigg

May 2019

ix

Vietnamese farmers have for centuries regarded rice as “white gold” (vàng

trắng), reflecting its vital importance to household food security and liveli￾hoods. Farmers throughout the Lower Mekong Basin have a similar view

of rice as the traditional basis of their wealth and well-being. A household

able to produce abundant supplies of rice was not only secure economi￾cally but achieved social and political status within the village community.

The frequent depredations of floods and droughts on the one hand and

extractive state regimes on the other only heightened the value placed on

the household’s rice supplies.

In the past four decades, rice has also become a commercial crop of

great importance to Lower Mekong farmers, augmenting but not replac￾ing its role in securing their subsistence. Particularly in Northeast Thailand

and the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, rice farming has become a major

export industry, spurring a process of rural development that has helped

lift many households out of poverty. Farmers in Cambodia and Laos have

also increased their output to such a level that both countries have become

self-sufficient in rice and are entering into export markets, particularly

through cross-border trade with Vietnam and Thailand. Significantly, the

Cambodian government adopted the term “white gold” in 2010 to epito￾mise the country’s push into high-quality rice exports.

This book is the outcome of a collaborative research effort to under￾stand the current status of this process of commercialisation in the rice

sector of the Lower Mekong Basin, with a view to identifying prospects

and policy issues for the coming decade. This involved studying not just

change in rice-based farming systems but in the value chains through

Preface

x PREFACE

which farmers gain access to resources and inputs and market their out￾puts, and the institutional arrangements governing those farming systems

and value chains. The focus was on the rainfed and irrigated lowlands of

the Basin rather than the sloping uplands as it is in the former environ￾ments that the commercialisation of rice farming has unfolded so dramati￾cally, whereas rice cultivation in the uplands has been increasingly

constrained, both technically and politically.

This publication has been made possible with support from the

Australian Government through the Australian Centre for International

Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

The main body of this research was conducted as part of an ACIAR￾funded project—“Developing agricultural policies for rice-based farming

systems in Lao PDR and Cambodia” (ASEM/2009/023). This project

was co-led by Rob Cramb of the University of Queensland (UQ),

Silinthone Sacklokham of the National University of Laos (NUOL),

Theng Vuthy of the Cambodia Development Resources Institute (CDRI),

Benchaphun Ekasingh of Chiang Mai University (CMU) in Thailand, and

Dao The Anh of the Centre for Agrarian Systems Research and

Development (CASRAD) in Vietnam.

The findings from this project were supplemented by socio-economic

studies undertaken as part of a second project—“Developing improved

farming and marketing systems in rainfed regions of southern Lao PDR”

(CSE/2009/004)—involving Rob Cramb and Jonathan Newby (then

with UQ), Silinthone Sacklokham (NUOL), and Vongpaphane Manivong

(then with the National Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute

[NAFRI] of Laos). The results of a third ACIAR project involving Rob

Cramb and Jonathan Newby—“Review of rice-based farming systems in

Mainland Southeast Asia” (C2012/229)—were also drawn upon in writ￾ing this book.

In addition, ACIAR provided John Allwright Fellowships for Chea

Sareth (of the Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development

Institute, CARDI) and Vongpaphane Manivong (NAFRI) to undertake

PhD studies at the University of Queensland on topics closely related to

the themes of this book. Nguyen Van Kien and Nguyen Hoang Han of An

Giang University contributed Chap. 17 based largely on their research.

Dao The Anh would like to acknowledge that Chap. 18 is based on

research supported by the Asian Development Bank under Regional

Research and Development Technical Assistance (R-RDTA)

Project TA-7648.

PREFACE xi

ACIAR also provided a grant for the book to be available through

Open Access.

We are grateful to Jonathan Rigg for kindly agreeing to write the

Foreword to the book, to CartoGIS of the Australian National University

for permission to reproduce the maps in Figs. 1.1, 2.1, 5.1, 11.1, and

17.1, and to the Mekong River Commission for permission to reproduce

the maps in Figs. 1.4 and 1.5.

Both local currencies and United States Dollars (USD) are used in the

book. Exchange rates have fluctuated over the 2010s, but the mean rates

for the period 2010–2018 are a good guide to orders of magnitude: 1

USD = 32.5 Thai Baht (THB) = 4063 Cambodian Riel (KHR) = 8143

Lao Kip (LAK) = 21,227 Vietnamese Dong (VND).

QLD, Australia Rob Cramb

June 2019

xiii

Part I Introduction 1

1 The Evolution of Rice Farming in the Lower Mekong

Basin 3

Rob Cramb

Part II A Fragrant Aroma 37

2 Commercialisation of Rice Farming in Northeast

Thailand 39

Pornsiri Suebpongsang, Benchaphun Ekasingh, and Rob

Cramb

3 Evolution of Rice Farming in Ubon Ratchathani Province 69

Prathanthip Kramol and Benchaphun Ekasingh

4 Farmer Organizations in Ubon Ratchathani Province 85

Prathanthip Kramol, Pornsiri Suebpongsang, and Benchaphun

Ekasingh

Contents

xiv CONTENTS

Part III A Sticky Situation 101

5 From Subsistence to Commercial Rice Production in Laos 103

Vongpaphane Manivong and Rob Cramb

6 Adapting the Green Revolution for Laos 121

Liana Williams and Rob Cramb

7 Rainfed and Irrigated Rice Farming on the Savannakhet

Plain 151

Silinthone Sacklokham, Lytoua Chialue, and Fue Yang

8 The Supply of Inputs to Rice Farmers in Savannakhet 169

Chitpasong Kousonsavath and Silinthone Sacklokham

9 Rice Marketing and Cross-Border Trade in Savannakhet 187

Phengkhouane Manivong and Silinthone Sacklokham

10 Economic Constraints to the Intensification of Rainfed

Lowland Rice in Laos 201

Jonathan Newby, Vongpaphane Manivong, and Rob Cramb

Part IV In Pursuit of White Gold 225

11 The Commercialisation of Rice Farming in Cambodia 227

Rob Cramb, Chea Sareth, and Theng Vuthy

12 The Production, Marketing, and Export of Rice in Takeo 247

Chhim Chhun, Theng Vuthy, and Nou Keosothea

13 The Role of Irrigation in the Commercialisation of Rice

Farming in Southern Cambodia 261

Chea Sareth, Rob Cramb, and Shu Fukai

CONTENTS xv

14 The Supply of Fertiliser for Rice Farming in Takeo 291

Theng Vuthy

15 The Use of Credit by Rice Farmers in Takeo 309

Kem Sothorn

16 Contract Farming of High-Quality Rice in Kampong

Speu 327

Nou Keosothea and Heng Molyaneth

Part V The Overflowing Rice Bowl 345

17 Trends in Rice-Based Farming Systems in the Mekong

Delta 347

Nguyen Van Kien, Nguyen Hoang Han, and Rob Cramb

18 The Domestic Rice Value Chain in the Mekong Delta 375

Dao The Anh, Thai Van Tinh, and Nguyen Ngoc Vang

19 The Cross-Border Trade in Rice from Cambodia to

Vietnam 397

Dao The Anh and Thai Van Tinh

20 Cross-Border Trade in Sticky Rice from Central Laos to

North Central Vietnam 413

Dao The Anh and Pham Cong Nghiep

Part VI Conclusion 423

21 Issues of Rice Policy in the Lower Mekong Basin 425

Rob Cramb

xvii

Chhim  Chhun Cambodia Development Resource Institute, Phnom

Penh, Cambodia

Lytoua Chialue Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Rural Economics

and Food Technology, National University of Laos, Vientiane, Laos

Rob  Cramb School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of

Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

Dao  The  Anh Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hanoi,

Vietnam

Benchaphun  Ekasingh Faculty of Agriculture, Department of

Agricultural Economy and Development, Chiang Mai University, Chiang

Mai, Thailand

Chea  Sareth Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development

Institute, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Shu  Fukai School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of

Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

Heng Molyaneth Faculty of Development Studies, Royal University of

Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Kem  Sothorn Parliamentary Institute of Cambodia, Phnom Penh,

Cambodia

List of Contributors

xviii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Chitpasong Kousonsavath Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Rural

Economics and Food Technology, National University of Laos, Vientiane,

Laos

Prathanthip Kramol Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural

Economy and Development, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai,

Thailand

Vongpaphane  Manivong Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry,

Vientiane, Laos

Phengkhouane Manivong Faculty of Agriculture, National University

of Laos, Vientiane, Laos

Jonathan Newby International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT),

Vientiane, Laos

Nguyen  Hoang  Han Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW,

Australia

Nguyen Ngoc Vang An Giang University, Long Xuyen, Vietnam

Nguyen Van Kien An Giang University, Long Xuyen, Vietnam

Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University,

Canberra, ACT, Australia

Nou Keosothea National Committee, Economic and Social Commission

for Asia and the Pacific, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International

Cooperation, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Pham  Cong  Nghiep Center for Agrarian Systems Research and

Development, Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hanoi, Vietnam

Silinthone  Sacklokham SEAMEO Regional Centre for Community

Education Development, Vientiane, Laos

Pornsiri  Suebpongsang Faculty of Agriculture, Department of

Agricultural Economy and Development, Chiang Mai University, Chiang

Mai, Thailand

Thai  Van  Tinh Center for Agricultural Policy, Institute of Policy and

Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development, Ministry of Agriculture

and Rural Development, Hanoi, Vietnam