‘When the strong arms leave the farms’... for a while, for good, for a better life
Photo: World Agroforestry/Elisabeth Simelton
Researchers have examined the impact of farmers’ migration in two disaster-prone regions of Viet Nam: one with high absolute poverty rates; the other poor in terms of unemployment rates.
‘When we asked the farmers in our study in Viet Nam,’ said Elisabeth Simelton, lead author of a study on rural migration and a senior scientist with World Agroforestry (ICRAF) Viet Nam, ‘poverty and the hardship of being a farmer were among the most common reasons for seeking non-farm jobs. On a farm, each family member can be converted to labour capacity or “strength of arms”. Migration from farms often starts not with the entire family but as a household risk assessment of whose “arm strength” to sacrifice and whose can generate the best economic returns.’
Despite family planning, which theoretically reduces limits on working outside the home, rural Vietnamese women remain largely responsible for housework, the fields nearby the homestead and tasks such as weeding and planting. Men, arguably having the ‘stronger arms’, tend to manage forestry and more distant fields. And when members of farm households leave to find jobs in the cities, men tend to go first, leaving the elderly, mothers, sisters and wives behind. Skewed gender demographics can signal gendered vulnerability risks, as opportunities for women and men to maximize their contributions in agriculture are often unequal.
