If you have a chance to visit the farm of Thi Dieu and Mang Min in Thuan Bac district, in South Viet Nam, what you see will make you think of a football field with a hard and flat ground and little grass. For 3 years, the farmland has been abandoned, cracked and dry due to intense drought. 

There was not enough rain for the corn to grow and produce seed. The whole field had only buds. Crop loss, soil depleted, financial loss. Hunger.

In order to raise 3 kids, Thi Dieu and her husband Mang Min, both Raglai ethnic minority, had to work other jobs. She said: “Since we can’t grow our own crops. It is lucky to get hired to make some money to buy food for my kids and ourselves”. 

All over the Central Highlands and Central Coast regions of Viet Nam, similar stories are not hard to find. In many villages, most people leave their homes early in the morning to work as hired hands on other farms, that are rich and have the resources to keep their land irrigated. They leave behind their own drought ridden farmlands, and their children and parents. 

A burning question is what should be done so that farmers like Thi Dieu and Mang Min can work on their own farmlands, harvesting food and making an income, instead of working low-paid job elsewhere.

An initiative by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development and UN Development Program, with funding from Green Climate Fund, is looking at how to empower vulnerable smallholder farmers – particularly women and ethnic minority farmers – to tackle increasing risks from climate change to agricultural production. The core pillars of the project include construction and non-construction measures, to help farmers to increase access to water, secure water, adopt climate-resilient agricultural practices, and strengthening access to agro-climate information so they can grow the right crops at the right time.