Socio-economic constraints to rice farmers’ adoption of the community trap barrier system for controlling rodents in rice-based farming systems in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Abstract

In the Mekong delta region, rodents are one of the major pests that rice farmers need to control regularly using physical and chemical methods. Chemical methods are more commonly used because they are convenient. The Community Trap Barriers System (CTBS) is a new environmentally-friendly, physical rodent control method. Despite being introduced to farmers, the adoption has been slow because the technology requires collective adoption to overcome cost constraints. In this study, collective use of this method was found to be challenging because of two main reasons. First, farmers found it difficult to manage the trap barrier system as a common pool resource. Second, collective use at the field level is constrained by the difficulties to obtain consensus among farmers in the adoption area. Current levels of social capital, the source of collective action, at the field level were found to be in decline when compared with those in the past. The decline is attributed to the changes in relationships between farmers at the field level. Farmers are unable to maintain their traditional networks which were grounded on kin, neighbour, and friendship relations. In addition, social and economic development has improved rural lifestyles but this has resulted in a lack of need for the social capital represented by those traditional relationships, especially for the rice farming practice. The adoption of the CTBS, as well as other collective based technologies will be challenging unless there are efforts to improve social capital at the field level. This may well be best achieved at the local government level because farmers have a strong reliance on the government to facilitate the social capital generation process.