Factors affecting farmers’ adoption of integrated rice–fish farming systems in the Mekong delta, Vietnam

In the Mekong delta, inland fishing and rice production provided a major source of income for rural communities. Since early settlement, the inhabitants have caught fish. Still, fish provides the main source of animal protein in their daily diet (Madan et al. 2005). Fish are caught in flood plains and in rice fields. The wild fish catch has declined since 1970 (Gagauan & Arce 1992), as a result of farmers growing high-yielding rice varieties with two or three crops a year, which requires high doses of agrochemicals and low water levels in the field. The gradual intensification of rice production has resulted in the local overproduction of rice, creating low market prices, while at the same time the rice production costs have increased (Bosma et al. 2005b, 2006). The resulting low profit margins for rice production and the guaranteed food security have encouraged farmers to diversify their rice-based farming systems into farms with multiple components (Table 1). In a majority of the freshwater areas in the Mekong delta, farmers have transformed part of the rice field into ditches for fish culture and dikes for upland crop and livestock production, thus creating a complex farm with sub-systems, sometimes composed of various components (Phong et al. 2007). In doing so, a large variety of goods can be produced for the market on the same farm allowing farming income to become more diversified. The commonly practised concurrent or integrated rice–fish (RF) culture system includes a large ditch surrounding the rice field and as Correspondence Roel H. Bosma, Aquaculture and Fisheries, Wageningen University, PO Box 338, 6700 AH Wageningen, the Netherlands. Email: [email protected]