Women farmers clean roots of a medicinal plant near the Red River dyke in northern Hung Yen Province’s Van Giang District.

Time limits on the use of farmland and restrictions on the size of landholdings are stymieing rural development, farmers and agriculture officials said at a conference in Hanoi on Monday.

The current Land Law allows farming households to have a maximum of three hectares each for agricultural production. It also limits the duration of the land-use rights: 20 years for annual crops and 50 years for perennials.

Those whose terms expire this year must register with the provincial administration to extend their terms.

Farmers who had already exceeded the three-hectare limit before the regulation took effect in 2003 must renew their land-use rights after 10 years while perennial cultivators should do so after 25 years.

Households that began farming before 1993 will have to use year 1993 as the starting point of the 20 or 50- year span.

Anxiety

Some farmers have circumvented the three-hectare rule by buying land adjacent to theirs under other people’s names.

But when they want to borrow from banks, they can only use the land officially in their name as collateral, which means they cannot access the capital needed for larger operations.

Several farmers have also run into trouble when the people under whose names the land-use rights have been bought try to claim the land as their own.

Many farmers in the Mekong Delta’s An Giang Province have gone to court to settle such disputes.

Some farmers in the province, the country’s biggest rice producer, are worried they might not get the extension, even though it has been guaranteed by the government.

Many farmers who obtained their land-use rights in 1993 are worried they’ll lose their land in 2013.

Even if getting the renewal isn’t a problem, the waiting might be.

“Agriculture banks refuse to lend until they get the extension,” said a rural development official from the province.

Many farmers are skeptical that the government will process their applications in a timely manner.

“And waiting will cut their production,” the official said.

Amendments proposed

Officials from the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development suggested farmers be allowed to own land-use rights to five hectares of farmland instead of three.

They also said the Land Law should allow each farming household to keep the land for at least 50-70 years.

Farmer Nguyen Van Khai from Binh Duong Province said the current law only “caused difficulties for farmers.”

He wanted the government to allow farmers to expand their production and landholdings without limitations, reserving the right to revoke the land-use rights if the farmers performed badly.

“Of course the government has to ensure that the land is not used for other purposes,” he said.

The farmland limit also discourages investors aiming to open large-scale breeding facilities or build craft villages, the conference heard.

According to the ministry, the current Land Law fails to specify the amount of rural land reserved for craft villages.

The ministry said the law affects more than 61 million farmers but has made it difficult for agriculture officials to help farmers boost rural economies.

“Having more land is essential for Vietnamese farmers,” Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Ho Xuan Hung told Thanh Nien on the sidelines of the conference.

Hung said the solution was either to let each farmer control more land or implement a system in which farmers would share larger land areas through joint production programs.

Representatives also said rural land should be made more expensive to deter investors from buying up large plots to use for other purposes.

Rice fields should be priced two to four times more than the normal rate while other agriculture land should be 1.5-2 times more expensive than the regular rate, said a representative.

Livelihood

Lax and bureaucratic agriculture land management is another problem. Many people have been able to find loopholes to obtain permits to use agricultural land for purposes other than farming.

Often farmers have had to transfer their land to such projects without receiving due compensation.

Many participants at the conference said only the prime minister should be able to decide when to confiscate agriculture land for non-agricultural purposes.

“Farmers depend on land and the government has to ensure that they have the opportunity to make survive and make money from their own land,” Hung said.

Reported by Quang Thuan