Agriculture Land Conversion and Its Implications for Food Requirements and Farming in Vietnamese Northern Mountains45267

Agriculture Land Conversion and Its Implications for Food Requirements and Farming in Vietnamese Northern Mountains Nguyen An Thinh(1)*, Nguyen Phung Quan(2) (1) VNU University of Economics and Business, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam The Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMMA), Hanoi, Vietnam * Correspondence: anthinhhus@gmail.com (2) Abstract: Vietnamese Northern Mountains have seen urbanization with slow pace in the relationship with the effects the agricultural land conversion on local people's livelihoods, food and farming The paper aims at a quantitative monitoring and characterizing the conversion of agricultural to built-up land in a case study of Tran Yen (Yen Bai) by using satellite images focusing on the years 1994, 2004 and 2016 as well as examine the underlying relationships between specific land use land cover change (LULCC) and local livelihood diversification strategies Ethnographic fieldwork is combined with land-cover change mapping reveals hidden causes of LULCC Study results provided the status and drivers of the life and livelihood of people in Tran Yen district before and after land reclamation Our findings point to the importance of policy makers in approaching complementary approaches to integrating livelihood policies in the region to stabilize the lives of people Support policies should be provided to households directly affected by these planning projects Keywords: Agriculture Land Conversion; food requirements; farming; Vietnamese Northern Mountains Introduction The conversion of agricultural land to non-agricultural land use is a common way to provide space for infrastructure development, urbanization and industrialization Therefore, it is almost an unavoidable trend during economic development and population growth (Tan et al., 2009) Not only the area of agricultural land which was used as residential land has declined, but also number of farmers have declined As a result of reduced livelihoods from agricultural, people have gradually moved to new livelihoods (Firdaus et al., 2011) According to Cruz (2010), majority (more than 80 per cent) of the smallholder farmers in the world are food insecure and depend on land as their primary source of livelihoods Three out of four poor people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture either directly or indirectly (WB, 2008) When livelihoods changed, demand for food and production patterns changed Food supply and distribution systems in most developing countries are undergoing major changes following rapid urban population growth (FAO, 2005) As cities and towns grow, in terms of physical size and population, the existing production systems and cropping patterns in the peri-urban areas intensify and the origin of food supplies shifts, with supplies coming from areas further and further afield Land use land cover change (LULCC) could be detected by multiple means difference method In the 2000s, many studies applied effective tool for detecting changes in the space-time model of EDESUS 2019, FOR PEER REVIEW https://edesus.ueb.edu.vn the landscapes changes at various scales The results of studies indicate that the area of agricultural land is decreasing, but the area of construction land is increasing considerably However, all studies just carry out the image classification step and finding the variation of the area of the object class (Fazal, 2000; Mohammed et al., 2015; Mukhopadhyay et al., 2013; Statuto et al., 2016) Since the start of economic renovation in Vietnam, socio-economic and LULC has changed more and more significantly With the emergence and development of industrial zones, economic zones, urban areas and other non-agricultural projects, a large amount of farmland has disappeared In the setting of accelerating conversion of farmland for urbanization and industrialization, a number of studies was conducted in major cities in Vietnam Applications of GIS for detecting and analyzing spatial changes as well as quantifying results show the urban growth processes, and its impact on the land-use distribution (Tran, 2008; Pham et al., 2010; Nguyen et al., 2012) An examination of landscape metrics in Hanoi indicates three trends of agricultural landscape transformation: loss of area, fragmentation and edge irregularity (Pham et al., 2014) Fragmentation and edge irregularity occurred mostly in new urban districts where there were expansion and linear branches along transport axes The impact of farmland loss to rural household livelihoods has been considered recently Turner et al (2015) mixed methods approach using remote sensing data and ethnographic fieldwork They examined how land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) has occurred across three borderland provinces – Lai Chau, Ha Giang and Lao Cai to analyze the underlying relationships between specific LULCC and local livelihood diversification strategies While the loss of agricultural land causes the loss of traditional agricultural livelihoods and threatens food security, it can also bring about a wide range of new opportunities for households to diversify their livelihoods and sources of well-being A few studies argue that the impact is negligible, when people's income is not much difference after the acquisition of agricultural land (Nghi et al., 2012; Le and Tran, 2016) Methodology 2.1 Study area The research is carried out in Tran Yen district, which is located in the northeast of Yen Bai province, with an area of 62,857.99 hectares, geographic coordinates from 21°31'48 N to 104°59'00"E The North borders of Van Yen district, Ha Hoa district and Phu Tho province in the south, Yen Binh district and Yen Bai city in the east, Van Chan district in the west Tran Yen district center is Co Phuc town, 13.5 km away from Yen Bai city Tran Yen also has the Hanoi - Lao Cai railway running through, with the Red River running in the direction of Northwest - South East, Highway 37, Highway 32C and 03 Provincial Road 163,166,172 are land roads of district Under the industrialization and modernization policy, Tran Yen district have been changes in agricultural production in particular, and economic activities in general According to the report of 2015, the area of agricultural land decreased 1,170.22 hectares; Non-agricultural land increased 1,237.86 hectares Labor in agriculture, although tending to decline, still accounts for a high rate of 78.39% (2015), while labor in industry, construction occupies, and commercial services in spite of the trend is quite slow, 6.25% The economic structure has shifted sharply in the direction of decreasing the proportion of agriculture and forestry from 52.7% in 2005 and 41.0% in 2010, the industry and construction increased from 27.4% in 2005 and 35% 0% in 2010, trade - services increased from 19.9% in 2005 and 24.0% in 2010 With the rapid restructuring of the economy towards reducing the share of agriculture and forestry, the area of agricultural land has been transformed into residential land, roads, factories, etc On the other hand, with the proportion of labor in the agricultural sector still occupies a high proportion, the acquisition of agricultural land has a significant impact on the livelihood of the people here For these reasons, we have chosen Tran Yen as the area to investigate and analyze the impact of agricultural land transfer on livelihoods of people 2.2 Data collection The study is based on both primary and secondary sources of data, and has an exploratory design The primary data were collected through field surveys, whereas the secondary data were obtained from government and institutions through published and unpublished reports, records and literature In order to detect the change of agricultural land and urban growth in the study area, we used two Landsat TM satellite images acquired in October 1994, October 2004 and Landsat October 2016 Because these days have low cloud cover