Adaptation To Salinity Intrusion For Rice Farming Household In The Vietnamese Mekong Delta

Agriculture has considerably been affected due to the increased salinity in recent years in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). The saline intrusion has increasingly caused problems to irrigation management, making it impossible to sustain the desired crop productivity. Rice farming are actually the most vulnerable as they have limited adaptive capacities and are more dependent on water for food production and other economic activities. This paper aims to understand how rice farming households responded to impacts of saline intrusion in the VMD, focusing the adaptive capacity and adaptation to saline intrusion at household level. The study showed that most rice farming households perceived the impacts of saline intrusion on their production activities, but only a few households prepared for adaptation options. Their decisions were not based on long-term saline intrusion impacts because households made decisions and changed farming practices due to economic factors and government policy support. The environment factors such as saline intrusion always came after economic and government policy factors. Government policy strongly affected production conditions of rice farming households through building irrigation, dyke and sluice gate systems. It means that change of production activities of rice farming households much more depended on government programs and development goals. Thus, households have fewer choices of production diversification away from rice farming