Developing Permanent Vegetable Production Systems for the Red River Delta, Vietnam

The year-round demand for commercially produced vegetables in South-East Asia is growing rapidly because of ongoing population growth and urbanisation. Vegetable production plays an important role in the rural economy of the Red River Delta, the economic centre of northern Vietnam. Field vegetables, however, are often grown in the cool season from October to January, in rotation with wet rice in the cool and the hot season from February to September. As this often causes seasonality of vegetable supply, we designed alternative cropping systems, with the aim to develop year-round supply for big cities such as Hanoi, to increase farmers’ income and to limit pest and disease incidence. Data on profit, labour requirement and costs of pesticide use of 42 vegetable crops grown in the Red River Delta were collected. From these data, five different permanent vegetable production systems were designed based on the following scenarios: (i) increase profit, (ii) reduce labour requirement, (iii) decrease the costs of pesticide use, (iv) maximize crop biodiversity, and (v) select crops with low perishable products, respectively. From May 2007 to May 2009, these systems were tested in the field and compared with the traditional system in which vegetable production in the cool season was rotated with wet rice cultivation in the cool and hot season. Profits of the high profit system and of the low labour requirement system was higher than that of the traditional system. The study suggests that permanent vegetable production systems such as the high profit system and the low labour requirement system can be an option to increase income for farmers in the Red River Delta, Vietnam.