TY - JOUR

T1 - Does land tenure security promote manure use by farm households in Vietnam?

AU - Nguyen, Trung Thanh

AU - Bauer, Siegfried

AU - Grote, Ulrike

N1 - Funding Information: We acknowledge support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Open Access Publishing Fund of Leibniz Universit?t Hannover. We thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor for their useful comments.

PY - 2016/2/18

Y1 - 2016/2/18

N2 - Facing widespread poverty and land degradation, Vietnam started a land reform in 1993 as part of its renovation policy package known as "Doi Moi". This paper examines the impacts of improved land tenure security, via this land reform, on manure use by farm households. As manure potentially improves soil fertility by adding organic matter and nutrients to the soil surface, it might contribute to improving soil productive capacity and reversing land degradation. Random effect regression models are applied to a panel dataset of 133 farm households in the Northern Uplands of Vietnam collected in 1993, 1998, and 2006. The results confirm that land tenure security has positive effects on manure use, but the levels of influence differ depending on whether the land has been privatized or whether the land title has already been issued. In addition, manure use is also influenced by the number of cattle and pigs, the education level and ethnicity of household heads, farm land size and non-farm income. The findings suggest that speeding up land privatization and titling, encouraging cattle and pig rearing, and improving education would promote manure use in farm production. However, careful interpretation of our research findings is required as land privatization, together with economic growth and population pressure, might lead to overuse of farm inputs.

AB - Facing widespread poverty and land degradation, Vietnam started a land reform in 1993 as part of its renovation policy package known as "Doi Moi". This paper examines the impacts of improved land tenure security, via this land reform, on manure use by farm households. As manure potentially improves soil fertility by adding organic matter and nutrients to the soil surface, it might contribute to improving soil productive capacity and reversing land degradation. Random effect regression models are applied to a panel dataset of 133 farm households in the Northern Uplands of Vietnam collected in 1993, 1998, and 2006. The results confirm that land tenure security has positive effects on manure use, but the levels of influence differ depending on whether the land has been privatized or whether the land title has already been issued. In addition, manure use is also influenced by the number of cattle and pigs, the education level and ethnicity of household heads, farm land size and non-farm income. The findings suggest that speeding up land privatization and titling, encouraging cattle and pig rearing, and improving education would promote manure use in farm production. However, careful interpretation of our research findings is required as land privatization, together with economic growth and population pressure, might lead to overuse of farm inputs.

KW - Economic incentive

KW - Land reform

KW - Random effect econometric models

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84960358659&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/su8020178

DO - 10.3390/su8020178

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84960358659

VL - 8

JO - Sustainability (Switzerland)

JF - Sustainability (Switzerland)

SN - 2071-1050

IS - 2

M1 - 178

ER -