NEWS

2025.02.28

【Report】 The 76th AJI Frontier Seminar was held! Nguyen Thi Thu Hien presented “Farm Mechanization and Non-farm Employment in Rural Central Vietnam.”

The 76th AJI Frontier Seminar was held online on Tuesday, February 18, 2025. Nguyen Thi Thu Hien, a student at the Graduate School of Economics, Ritsumeikan University, gave a presentation titled “Farm Mechanization and Non-farm Employment in Rural Central Vietnam.”

Nguyen began by explaining that agricultural mechanization employing machinery, implements, and tools is increasingly popular in rural areas where farm labor is becoming scarce due to rapid urbanization and industrialization, rising rural wages, and farm intensification. She sighted instances in Zambia, China, and Cote d'Ivoire where adopting mechanization has compensated for seasonal labor shortages and enabled farmers to expand their fields to achieve economies of scale. In rural households, non-farm work is becoming an important way to supplement incomes, alleviating rural poverty and improving household well-being. Simultaneously farm mechanization frees up labor for non-farm employment and increases the family income. Excess income can be invested in the farm, further improving household finances.

In Vietnam, the use of tractors and combine harvesters has increased, and more efficient production has increased farmers’ incomes especially in the three main deltas, where farming land is less fragmented.
The Vietnam government has initiated supporting policies to help farmers to buy equipment, However, these policies have not been popular due to complicated application procedures, and most farmers chose to rent machinery due to the high cost and small-scale of farms.

In her research on the relationship between non-farm employment and agricultural mechanization from several aspects, Nguyen found that more expenditure on mechanization positively and significantly correlated with the number of household members involved in non-farm activities and concluded that household non-farm employment has a positive impact on farm mechanization expenditure.

Based on her findings, Nguyen advocated providing subsidies for manufacturers to develop machinery suitable for small-scale farms and easier for less educated farmers to use. She also recommended promoting mechanization through social media. She stressed that land consolidation could create more efficient areas for mechanization and suggested introducing strategies to diversify farmers' income sources to encourage investment in machinery. Finally, she advised that improving women's access to farm machinery technologies and non-farm employment could enhance household welfare and production performance and reduce gender inequity.

In the Q&A session, the audience wanted to know more about farming communities in Vietnam, the kinds of non-farm work that were available in rural areas, and how much emphasis the government was putting on rural development. Nguyen pointed out that farmers might be employed in other larger scale farms, as well as factories. The audience appreciated her excellent answers and her interesting presentation.

Nguyen Thi Thu Hien delivering her presentation