We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2022
Swidden cultivation has long been seen as incompatible with state goals for development, modernisation and environmental protection in Vietnam. This article provides a history of anti-swidden programmes since the French colonial period: how targets were selected, how different justifications were used, how interventions were implemented, and what the impacts were. Shifts occurred over time in targets, tools, and techniques, due to leeway available to local officials and resistance of target populations, but which also prolonged overall anti-swidden campaigns by providing opportunities for continual reinvention. Shifting justifications have allowed for new funding and approaches over time, while remaining rooted in misunderstandings and cultural chauvinism.
Research in 2004–06 was carried out with the assistance of the Institute for Ethnic Minority Affairs, Hanoi, with funding from the Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK and the World Bank, Hanoi. Thanks go to Lê Ngọc Thắng, Lê Hải Đường, Phan Văn Hùng, Nguyễn Văn Thắng, Do Văn Hoá, Nguyễn Lâm Thanh, the late Hoàng Công Dũng, Hoàng Thị Lam, Vũ Thanh Hiên, Vương Xuân Tình, Vũ Thị Diệu Hương, Vũ Thị Hồng Anh, and Lê Duy Hưng for being part of the research. Nguyễn Văn Chính provided helpful comments on an earlier presentation of this work, and thanks to Nguyễn Thị Thành Bình, Trần Thị Thủy Bình, Lê Hồng Hải, Hoàng Cầm, and Frank Proschan for providing articles for research.
1 For recent examples, see Van Mai, Thanh and Phuc To, Xuan, ‘A systems thinking approach for achieving a better understanding of swidden cultivation in Vietnam’, Human Ecology 43, 1 (2015): 169–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thuy, Pham Thu et al. , ‘The politics of swidden: A case study from Nghe An and Son La in Vietnam’, Land Use Policy 99 (2020): 1030–50Google Scholar.
2 Dressler, Wolfram, Smith, William and Montefrio, Marvin, ‘Ungovernable? The vital natures of swidden assemblages in an upland frontier’, Journal of Rural Studies 61 (2018): 343–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dove, Michael, The banana tree at the gate: A history of marginal peoples and global markets in Borneo (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Schmidt-Vogt, Dietrich, ‘Defining degradation: The impacts of swidden on forests in northern Thailand’, Mountain Research and Development 18, 2 (1998): 135–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chan, Nyein et al. , ‘Livelihood activities of swiddeners under the transition of swidden agriculture: A case study in a Khmu village, northern Laos’, in Environmental resources use and challenges in contemporary Southeast Asia, ed. Ivan Lopez, Mario and Suryomenggolo, Jafar (Singapore: Springer, 2018), pp. 231–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Mertz, Ole et al. , ‘Swidden change in Southeast Asia: Understanding causes and consequences’, Human Ecology 37 (2009): 259–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ellen, Roy, ‘Studies of swidden agriculture in Southeast Asia since 1960: An overview and commentary on recent research and syntheses’, Asia Pacific World 3, 1 (2012): 18–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ziegler, Alan et al. , ‘Recognizing contemporary roles of swidden agriculture in transforming landscapes of Southeast Asia’, Conservation Biology 25, 4 (2011): 846–8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Dressler, Wolfram et al. , ‘The impact of swidden decline on livelihoods and ecosystem services in Southeast Asia: A review of the evidence from 1990 to 2015’, AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 46 (2016): 291–310CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
4 Karl Pelzer, Pioneer settlement in the Asiatic tropics: Studies in land utilization and agricultural colonization in Southeastern Asia (Washington, DC: American Geographical Society, 1957), p. 23.
5 Sarah Turner and Phạm Thị Thanh Hiền, ‘“Nothing is like it was before”: The dynamics between land-use and land-cover, and livelihood strategies in the northern Vietnam borderlands’, Land 4, 4 (2015): 1030–59; Stephen Leisz et al., ‘Telecouplings in the East–West Economic Corridor within borders and across’, Remote Sensing 8, 12 (2016): 1012–30.
6 Georges Condominas, ‘Anthropological reflections on swidden change in Southeast Asia’, Human Ecology 37, 3 (2009): 265–7.
7 Michael Dove, ‘Theories of swidden agriculture, and the political economy of ignorance’, Agroforestry Systems 1, 3 (1983): 85–99.
8 James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
9 Ziegler et al., ‘Recognising contemporary roles’, p. 846; Wolfram Dressler, ‘Green governmentality and swidden decline on Palawan Island’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 39, 2 (2013): 250–64.
10 In a similar situation in the Philippines, authors identified the interplay between policies and local push-back as ‘mediating’ practices. See Wolfram Dressler, Will Smith, Christian A. Kull, Rachel Carmenta and Juan Pulhin, ‘Recalibrating burdens of blame: Anti-swidden politics and green governance in the Philippine uplands’, Geoforum 124, 6 (2021): 348–59.
11 Interviews with policymakers were carried out in 2004–05 with the assistance of the Institute for Ethnic Minorities (IEM), and I also obtained a number of unpublished government documents and data from these sources. The local field studies included research trips of approximately one month each in Lào Cai province in 1997 with Hmông communities; with Thái and Hmông communities in Yên Bái in 2004; with several Katu communities in Quảng Nam in early 2005; with Pa Cô and Vân Kiều villages in Quảng Trị province in late 2005; with two Êdê and two Mnông communities in central Đăk Lăk in summer 2006; Hmông, Lôlô, and Tày communities in Hà Giang in 2006; two Katu villages in Thừa Thiên Huế in fall 2011; and two Cơ ho villages in Lâm Đồng over nearly three months in 2011 and 2014. Together with IEM, I also carried out a quantitative survey for four months in 2005 on changes in agricultural practices and livelihoods in the six provinces of Gia Lai, Kon Tum, Thanh Hoá, Nghệ An, Cao Bằng and Bắc Kạn, for which 180 households across six ethnic groups were surveyed.
12 In Thai, primary swiddens in new forest are known as rai luen loi, but other types of swiddens, such as on fallowing land, have other names. In Vietnamese, rẫy is often used together with nương, a Vietnamese word for a dry or non-irrigated field of any type, such as in the word ‘nương rẫy’, a swidden field.
13 ‘Forest regulations of Tonkin’, in Resident Superior of Tonkin (RST) 56834: Mesures de protection des forêts contre la pratique du ray et contre les feux de brousse au Tonkin, National Archives of Vietnam (NAV) 1, Hanoi.
14 Letter from RST to Residents throughout Tonkin, in RST 56834.
15 For example, in central Vietnam among the Bru, later reports noted that they did not move or shift villages unless there was a lack of land or disaster struck; see J.H. Hoffet, ‘Les Mois de la Chaine annamitique entre Tourane et les Boloven’, Terre Air Mer: La Géographie 1 (1933): 1–22.
16 Mark Cleary, ‘Managing the forest in colonial Indochina c.1900–1940’, Modern Asian Studies 39, 2 (2005): 257–83.
17 30 Apr. 1918 letter from Sơn La Resident Bonnemain, in RST 56834.
18 Cleary, ‘Managing the forest’, p. 257; Jean Michaud and Sarah Turner, ‘Tonkin's uplands at the turn of the 20th century: Colonial military enclosure and local livelihood effects’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint 57, 2 (2016): 154–67.
19 Pierre Gourou, L'utilisation du sol en Indochine française (Paris: Centre d'études de politique étrangère, 1940), p. 82.
20 RST 56834: Mesures de protection des forêts contre la pratique du ray et contre les feux de brousse au Tonkin, NAV 1, Hanoi; G.D. Fangeaux, ‘Le service forestier de l'Annam’, Bulletin des Amis du Vieux Huế (1931): 236.
21 Fangeaux, ‘Le service forestier’, p. 235.
22 22 July 1918 letter from Resident Bonnemain to RST, no. 212 a.s des incendies de forêts, in RST 56834.
23 Albert Sarraut, Arrêté du Gouverneur Général concernant les bois et forêts sis sur le territoire de la Cochinchine (Hanoi: Office of the Gouverneur Général, 1913), p. 238.
24 19 Jan. 1917 letter from RST to Resident of Lao Kay, a.s. de la protection de la région forestière de Chapa and ‘Rays et feux de brousse’, in RST 1555 a.s. Protection de la forêt, NAV 1, Hanoi.
25 Frédéric Thomas, ‘Ecologie et gestion forestiere dans l'Indochine française’, Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer 319 (1998): 59–86.
26 P.M. Allonard, Pratiqué de la lutte contre les feux de brousse: Surveillance de la population, moyens de propagande, lignes pare-feux (Hanoi: Imprimerie d'Extrême-Orient, 1937), pp. 10–13.
27 Letter 22 July 1918 from Bonnemain to RST, 212 a.s des incendies de forêts, in RST 56834.
28 Bonnemain noted that lands under ray paid 10 piastres per mẫu (5,000m2) in tax. He suggested reducing this to 0.50 or 0.30 piastres a mau to encourage their conversion to permanent fields or wet rice.
29 RST N93 75.450: Pratiqué des ‘rays’, 1931–39, NAV 1, Hanoi.
30 RST 1555 a.s. Protection de la forêt, Rays et feux de brousse, NAV 1, Hanoi.
31 Ibid.
32 14 Aug. 1918 letter from Bonnemain to RST, in RST 56834.
33 Non-voluntary corvée was used for porterage, road building and other public works. See 14 Aug. 1918 letter from Resident Bonnemain, in RST 56834.
34 Hội đồng Dân tộc-Quốc hội, Chính sách và pháp luật của Ðảng, nhà nước về dân tộc [National Assembly-National Council, Policies and laws of the Party and State regarding minorities] (Hanoi: NXB Văn hóa dân tộc, 2000).
35 Bộ Nông Lâm files, folder 5628, Báo cáo công tác lâm nghiêp trong 1955 của Ty Nông Lâm [Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Report of forestry work in 1955 of the Agro-forestry division], NAV 3, Hanoi.
36 Bộ Nông Lâm, Bảo vệ rừng trong sản xuất nương rẫy [Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Protecting forests in swidden production] (Hanoi: Bộ Nông Lâm, 1957).
37 Bộ Nông Lâm files, folder 5523: Tài liệu về vấn đề rẫy của Nhà Thủy Lâm [Documents regarding the problem of swidden of the Division of Water and Forests], NAV 3, Hanoi; likely prior to 1959.
38 Hội đồng Dân tộc Quốc hội, Chính sách và pháp luật của Ðảng, nhà nước về dân tộc [Policies and laws of the Party and State regarding minorities] (Hanoi: NXB Văn hóa dân tộc, 2000).
39 Patricia Pelley, ‘“Barbarians” and “younger brothers”: The remaking of race in postcolonial Vietnam’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 29, 2 (1998): 374–91.
40 See Stan Tan, ‘“Swiddens, resettlements, sedentarizations, and villages”: State formation among the Central Highlanders of Vietnam under the First Republic, 1955–1961’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1, 1–2 (2006): 210–52.
41 Ibid., p. 221.
42 Vietnam Workers Party, Offensive against poverty and backwardness (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1963).
43 Lê Trung Đình, ‘Phát triển mạnh mẽ sản xuất nông nghiệp ở miền núi’ [Strongly develop agricultural production in the mountains], Học Tập, 1 (1967): 58.
44 Trần Lộc, ‘Yên Bái, tỉnh miền núi làm tốt công tác quân sự địa phương’ [Yên Bái, a mountainous province doing well at local militia work], Học Tập, 5 (1971): 43–9.
45 Nguyễn Anh Ngọc, ‘Những vấn đề lý luận và thực tiễn của công tác định canh định cư’ [Theoretical and practical issues in sedentarisation work], Tập Chí Dân Tộc Học 2, 3 (1989): 20–36.
46 Ibid., p. 23.
47 Ministry of Forestry, ‘Báo cáo phương an đổi mới công tác định canh định cư’ [Report on renewal of sedenarisation work] (Hanoi: Ministry of Forestry, 1990).
48 Tổng Cực Lâm Nghiệp files, folder 10 LN/QLR: Chỉ thị về nghiêm vụ quản lý bảo vệ rừng năm 1965 [Directive on strictly protecting forests in the year 1965], NAV 3, Hanoi.
49 Ministry of Forestry, ‘Báo cáo phương án đổi mới công tác định canh định cư’ [Report on renewal of sedenarisation work] (Hanoi: Ministry of Forestry, 1990). For example, in one article, a Zao (Dao) community was reported to have ‘gratefully’ relocated as ‘famine was rampant’ and they were threatened with ‘racial extermination’, while under DCDC, ‘bumper’ crops were soon produced. An Thu, ‘The Zao are coming down to the lowlands’, Vietnamese Studies 15 (1968): 175–87.
50 Interviews, Hà Giang, Nghệ An, Quảng Trị; Gerald Hickey, Free in the forest: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands, 1954–1976 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).
51 A Ministry of Agriculture report stated that DCDC was ‘a revolutionary mobilisation, with comprehensive content across many faces: economic, political, cultural, social and national security’. Bo Nong Nghiệp files, folder 206: Chỉ thị về công tác vận động Định canh định cư ở các cơ sơ quốc doanh Lâm nghiệp [Directive on the mobilisation of sedenarisation in State Forest Enterprises], 29 May 1980, NAV 3, Hanoi, p. 1.
52 Interviews, Đăk Lăk, 2006.
53 Nông Quốc Chấn, ‘Thirty years of cultural work among the ethnic minorities’, Vietnamese Studies 52 (1978): 57–63.
54 Ngo Vinh Long, ‘Some aspects of cooperativization in the Mekong Delta’, in Postwar Vietnam: Dilemmas in socialist development, ed. David Marr and Christine P. White (Ithaca: SEAP Publications, Cornell University, 1988), pp. 163–76.
55 Trường Chinh, ‘Đưa nhân dân các dân tộc ở Đăk Lăk tiến thẳng lên chủ nghĩa xã hội’ [Bringing all the people of all ethnic groups in Dak Lak straight to socialism], Tạp chí Cộng sản 8 (1983): 11.
56 Interviews, Gia Lai and Yên Bái, 2005.
57 Interviews, Quảng Trị and Đăk Lăk, 2005–06.
58 Benedict Kerkvliet, The power of everyday politics: How Vietnamese peasants transformed national policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
59 Ngọc, ‘Những vấn đề lý luận’, p. 29.
60 Office of Sedentarisation and New Economic Zones, Di dân, Kinh tế mới, Định canh định cư: Lịch sử và truyền thống [Migration, new economic zones, and sedentarisation: History and traditions] (Hanoi: Agriculture Publishing House, 2001).
61 Ministry of Forestry, Báo cáo phương an đổi mới công tác định canh định cư [Report on renewal of sedenarisation work] (Hanoi: MOF, 1990).
62 Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Tải liệu Hội nghị tổng kết công tác định cảnh định cư giai đoạn 1990–2002 [Documents of the conference summarising sedentarisation work 1990–2002] (Hanoi: MARD, 2004).
63 Vietnam News Agency, ‘Nomadic lifestyle to be phased out by 2005’, Viet Nam News, 5 May 2001, p. 4.
64 Oscar Salemink, ‘The King of Fire and Vietnamese ethnic policy in the Central Highlands’, in Development or domestication? Indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia, ed. Don McCaskill and Ken Kampe (Bangkok: Silkworm, 1997), pp. 488–535.
65 Ngọc, ‘Những vấn đề lý luận’, p. 23.
66 MARD, Tải liệu; Ngọc, ‘Những vấn đề lý luận’, p. 30.
67 Ministry of Forestry, Báo cáo phương án, p. 1.
68 Province of Lâm Đồng, ‘Dự án định canh định cư phát triển kinh tế xã hội xã Lộc Bắc, huyện Bảo Lộc, tỉnh Lâm Đồng [Project for sedentarisation to develop socioeconomy in Loc Bac commune, Bao Loc district, Lam Dong province], Nov. 1995.
69 Ngọc, ‘Những vấn đề lý luận’, p. 27.
70 Jennifer Sowerwine, ‘Territorialisation and the politics of highland landscapes in Vietnam: Negotiating property relations in policy, meaning and practice’, Conservation and Society 2, 1 (2004): 97–136; Bernard Henin, ‘Agrarian change in Vietnam's northern upland region’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 32, 1 (2002): 3–38.
71 Bùi Tân Yến et al., ‘Constraints on agricultural production in the northern uplands of Vietnam’, Mountain Research and Development 33, 4 (2013): 404–15.
72 For example, interviewees told me that ‘It is the Hmông habit to leave the land alone if it is resting for someone else,’ and that ‘Everyone in [an Êdê] village knows whose land is whose. You plant jackfruit or mango to indicate fallowing land is still owned by the household,’ but that strangers from other ethnic groups might not know these conventions.
73 Pamela McElwee, ‘“Blood relatives” or unfriendly neighbors? Vietnamese–ethnic minority interactions in the Annamite Mountains’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 3, 3 (2008): 81–116.
74 Pamela McElwee, Forests are gold: Trees, people and environmental rule in Vietnam (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016), pp. 97–108.
75 Ngọc, ‘Những vấn đề lý luận’, p. 26.
76 Interviews in 2004 in Song Thanh Nature Reserve in Quảng Nam and Phong Điền Nature Reserve in Thừa Thiên Huế confirmed that both parks’ borders included land claimed for swidden production by local communities.
77 Interview, Jie Yuk village, Đăk Lăk province, 2006.
78 Jens Jakobsen, Kjeld Rasmussen, Stephen Leisz, Rikke Folving and Nguyen Vinh Quang, ‘The effects of land tenure policy on rural livelihoods and food sufficiency in the upland village of Que, north central Vietnam’, Agricultural Systems 94, 2 (2007): 309–19.
79 Thomas Sikor and Đào Minh Trường, Sticky rice, collective fields: Community-based development among the Black Thai (Hanoi: Agricultural Publishing House, 2000); Jefferson Fox, ‘Forest interrupted: Tat hamlet and the political ecology of swidden agriculture’, in Farming with fire and water: The human ecology of a composite swiddening community in Vietnam's northern mountains (Kyoto: Kyoto Area Studies on Asia, 2001), pp. 347–8.
80 Do Văn Hoá, Lịch sử công tác định canh định cư [History of sedentarisation work] (Ha Noi: Bộ Nông nghiệp và Phát triển Nông thôn, 2005).
81 Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Taking stock, planning ahead: Evaluation of the National Target Programme on Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction and Programme 135 (Hanoi: UNDP Vietnam, 2004).
82 Ministry of Forestry, Báo cáo phương án, p. 4.
83 However, not all P135 target communes had activities aimed at swidden; only about half (733 communes) included DCDC work, per Decision no. 135/2000/QD-TTg, 29 Nov. 2000 of the Prime Minister.
84 Phan Sỹ Trà, Báo cáo chuyên đề: Giải pháp cải thiện tạp quán canh tác nông lâm nghiệp nhằm nâng cao đời sống của đồng bào dân tộc thiểu số gắn với vấn đề phát triển KT-XH miền núi Nghệ An [Thematic report: Solutions to improve agroforestry farming practices aimed at improving the livelihoods of ethnic minorities closely with socioeconomic development in mountainous Nghe An province] (Vinh: UBND Nghệ An, 2004), p. 6.
85 Ngọc, ‘Những vấn đề lý luận’, p. 24.
86 Interviews, Yên Bái, 2005.
87 For a comparable situation in Lao PDR, see Ian Baird and Bruce Shoemaker, ‘Unsettling experiences: Internal resettlement and international aid agencies in Laos’, Development and Change 38, 5 (2007): 865–88.
88 Nghiem Phuong Tuyen, Yasuyuki Kono and Stephen Leisz, ‘Crop boom as a trigger of smallholder livelihood and land use transformations: The case of coffee production in the northern mountain region of Vietnam’, Land 9, 2 (2020): 56; Nga Dao, ‘Rubber plantations in the Northwest: Rethinking the concept of land grabs in Vietnam’, Journal of Peasant Studies 42, 2 (2015): 347–69.
89 Lê Hải Đường et al., Improving agricultural livelihoods for poverty reduction for ethnic minority farmers in Vietnam (Hanoi: Institute for Ethnic Minority Affairs; World Bank, 2005). See also Victoria Kyeyune and Sarah Turner, ‘Yielding to high yields? Critiquing food security definitions and policy implications for ethnic minority livelihoods in upland Vietnam’, Geoforum 71 (2016): 33–43.
90 Roland Cochard, Dũng Trị Ngô, Patrick Waeber and Christian Kull, ‘Extent and causes of forest cover changes in Vietnam's provinces 1993–2013: A review and analysis of official data’, Environmental Reviews 25 (2017): 199–217; Li Peng et al., ‘A review of swidden agriculture in Southeast Asia’, Remote Sensing 6, 2 (2014): 1654–83.
91 Christine Bonnin and Sarah Turner, ‘Remaking markets in the mountains: Integration, trader agency and resistance in upland Northern Vietnam’, Journal of Peasant Studies 41, 3 (2014): 321–42.
92 Trà, Báo cáo chuyên đề, p. 6.
93 Trạm Tấu district, Yên Bái province, ‘Báo cáo đánh giá tình hình thực hiện công tác định canh định cư’ [Evaluation report of the implementation of sedentarisation work], 1 Aug. 2005.
94 Bob Baulch, Hung T. Pham, and Barry Reilly, ‘Decomposing the ethnic gap in rural Vietnam, 1993–2004’, Oxford Development Studies 40, 1 (2012): 87–117.
95 Le Ngoc Truong et al., Nghiên cứu về định cạnh, định cư ở Việt Nam [Research on sedentarisation in Vietnam] (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia, 2005).
96 Sarah Turner, ‘“Forever Hmong”: Ethnic minority livelihoods and agrarian transition in upland northern Vietnam’, The Professional Geographer 64, 4 (2012): 540–53; Christine Bonnin and Sarah Turner, ‘At what price rice? Food security, livelihood vulnerability, and state interventions in upland Northern Vietnam’, Geoforum 43, 1 (2017): 95–105.
97 UN-REDD Vietnam, ‘Operationalising REDD+ in Viet Nam’ (Hanoi: UN-REDD Vietnam, 2010).
98 Report cited in Pham Thu Thuy et al., ‘The politics of swidden’, p. 3. See also Pamela McElwee, ‘You say illegal, I say legal: The relationship between “illegal” logging and poverty, land tenure, and forest use rights in Vietnam’, Journal of Sustainable Forestry 19, 1–3 (2004): 97–135.
99 Rupert Friederichsen and Andreas Neef, ‘Variations of late socialist development: Integration and marginalization in the northern uplands of Vietnam and Laos’, European Journal of Development Research 22 (2010): 564–81.
100 Author fieldnotes, REDD+ workshop, Jan. 2014, Hanoi.
101 Ibid.
102 Moira Moeliono et al., ‘Local governance, social networks and REDD plus: Lessons from swidden communities in Vietnam’, Human Ecology 44 (2016): 440.
103 Pham Thu Thuy et al., ‘The politics of swidden’, p. 4.
104 Neil Jamieson, ‘Ethnic minorities in Vietnam: A country profile’ (Hanoi: Winrock International, 1996); Dove, ‘Theories of swidden agriculture’, p. 85.
105 Do Dinh Sam, Shifting cultivation in Vietnam (Hanoi: International Institue for Environment and Development, 1997); Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Di dân, kinh tế mới, định canh định cư: Lịch sử và truyền thống [Migration, new economic zones, sedentarisation: History and tradition] (Hanoi: Ministry of Agriculture, 2001).
106 Sarah Turner, Thomas Kettig, Dinh Thi Dieu and Pham Van Cu, ‘State livelihood planning and legibility in Vietnam's northern borderlands: The “rightful criticisms” of local officials’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 46, 1 (2015): 42–70.
107 There are estimates that 10–20% of upland lands are still being used for swiddening, albeit with shortened fallow cycles and different agricultural crops than previously; see Nguyen Thanh Lam, Aran Patanothai and A. Terry Rambo, ‘Recent changes in the composite swidden farming system of a Da Bac Tay ethnic minority community in Vietnam's northern mountain region’, Southeast Asian Studies 42, 3 (2004): 273–93.
108 For example, in Sơn La among the Black Thai, a 2-year rice, 3-year maize, and 5 to 7-year fallow system was replaced by up to 8 years of continuous cropping of rice-maize-cassava for the market, with only a short fallow afterwards; see A.N. Wezel, N. Steinmüller and J.R. Friederichsen, ‘Slope position effects on soil fertility and crop productivity and implications for soil conservation in upland northwest Vietnam’, Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 91, 1–3 (2002): 113–26.
109 Dressler et al., ‘Ungovernable?’, pp. 343; Nathalie van Vliet et al., ‘Trends, drivers and impacts of changes in swidden cultivation in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers: A global assessment’, Global Environmental Change 22 (2012): 418–29.
110 Ellen, ‘Studies of swidden agriculture’, p. 25; Nguyễn Văn Chính, ‘From swidden cultivation to fixed farming and settlement: Effects of sedentarization policies among the Kmhmu in Vietnam’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 3, 2 (2008): 44–80; Tran Duc Vien, Stephen Leisz, Nguyen Thanh Lam and A. Terry Rambo, ‘Using traditional swidden agriculture to enhance rural livelihoods in Vietnam's uplands’, Mountain Research and Development 26, 3 (2006): 192–6.
