Land Speculation and Householder Polarization in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam: A Case Study in the Former Area of the Hoa Duc and Bau Mon Hamlets

This paper describes the result of investigations and research studies conducted targeting the old site of Hoa Duc and Bau Mon Hamlets, Hoa An Village, Phung Hiep District in Hau Giang Province, Vietnam (Can Tho until 2002), which has been the site of an investigation by the authors since 1993. The authors conducted an entire household survey targeting more than three hundred households in the same area, four times in 1993, 1997, 2002, and 2011, in cooperation with Can Tho University. The authors also used the data gained from these investigations and analyzed actual conditions of the changes in agricultural structures in the target area and the causes of such changes. The research outcomes up to 1997 have already been released; thus, this paper describes the analytical outcomes of the period after that. As a result, the study found a trend in recent years involving a new situation that can be described as a twenty-first century-style differentiation and polarization of the farming population. This situation is new and completely different from the differentiation and polarization of the farming population governed by the disparity in productivity that was found in the analyses up to 1997. This is the differentiation and polarization of the farming population that is now significantly diverged from the growth of farming productivity as governed by the speculative characteristics of the land market, which moves under the strong influence of the input of excessive capital of developed countries. Such differentiation and polarization can be described as a falling trend of the overall farming population.