A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science, School of Environment, and Development

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1990

Recently , Viet Na m departed from the collectivized agricultural production system to an individual oriented contract sys t e m of production . Policies have resulted in partial liberalizing all input and output marketing and in allowing households to maximize their output and incomes. However, farmers ' income are still low, food supply is still insufficient in terms of the farm family nutritional reequipment. The problems faced by farmers can be. seen as follows: ( 1} How do farmers make decisions within limited farm resources in order to achieve their own goals? (2 ) How former cooperative could assist its members in agribusiness? ( 3 ) What are further policy improvement of fanning system that can be adopted? To deal with these problems, a case study 0f selected farming systems in Minh Quang cooperative, Vu Thu district , Thai Binh province was carried out. In this study , linear programming and parametric programming approaches were employedi11 complementary for conventional farm economic analysis , deriving optimum combination of farm enterprises and testing policy option s for improvements. The analysis of the existing farm ogranization showed t hat the principal constraints causing l ow farmers ' income were: ( J } low profitability of non -rice crop enterprises; (2) outdated pig feeding practice; (3) lack of capita l ; (4) unemployment; (5 ) am! low mark et price of output relative to production costs. Diversification of crop enterprises by introducing high quality rice varieties and high yield varieties of non-rice crops; improvement of feeding practice by marking use of maize , soybean , sweet potato instead of milled rice ; and innovation of carp et making could improve resource productivity and f .11·111 income. However , the full benefits of t h ese measures will not be realised unless the two following strategies are implemented : (1) former production cooperative should be re -organized into marketing cooperative and ( 2 } con tract quota system should be modified. The results indicate further study with more appropriate models in which the risks of output p rice and yields are best incorporated .