2010 Volume 26 Issue 4 Pages 131-140
Nam Dong, a mountainous district in central Vietnam, is located in a fragile natural resource area and therefore must be conserved. Agricultural productions, especially, cultivation systems played important role as livelihoods for local people, but its development trend was spontaneous in this region. Therefore, how to develop its potential with trade-off between productivity and sustainability had become an important issue for stakeholders. Nevertheless, researches about crop production systems (CPSs) under sustainable trends still had not adequately considered yet. Thus, this study was conducted aiming at providing information as well as evaluating and comparing the sustainability of CPSs at the household level in each micro-zone of this district. In such situation, the methods of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Sustainability Indicator Analysis (SIA) were particularly applied with seven selected indicators representing ecological, economic, and social dimensions. From the results of interviews in three selected study areas in Nam Dong, it was found that six main CPSs were applied in the district. However, in each particular commune, farmers applied different CPSs, land use patterns, cropping patterns, as well as other farming technical practices. Therefore, they got different profitability and yield stability. The significance of each indicator and overall aspect in sustainability of CPSs were outlined through the methods explained above. CPSs recommended in Huong Loc and Thuong Quang communes were Industrial Annual Crop and Vegetable along Stream, respectively. Meanwhile, Industrial Annual Crop and Fruit-Industrial Perennial Crop were recommended in Huong Phu commune by the SIA and AHP methods, respectively. However, regarding the environment in farming practices, it needs to be improved and concerned for both promising CPSs and disadvantageous CPSs. Proper conservations of soil fertility and advanced technique applications were required, since the yield stability of CPSs showed high fluctuations. In addition, the decision-making for choosing suitable practices should consider both natural and socio-economic characteristics of the local context.
