The Nui Choc refugee resettlement village, bisected by a canal ofthe same name. If security conditions can be improved all along this border-area canal in Hue D.uc district of An Giang, and if the need arises, this resettlement village could be extended for 21 kilometers along both banks and could house 2,000 families. Now there are 302 families living in the village, which was founded in January 1966.

Refugees are welcome in the Mekong Delta prov­ince of An Giang.

An oasis of peace and prosperity surrounded by war, An Giang was one of the few well-popUlated provinces in South Vietnam to emerge unscathed from the communists' Tet offensive of February 1968. Throughout the lunar new year series of attacks its four districts remained quiet and its capital at Long Xuyen, 150 kilometers southwest of Saigon, took not a single mortar round.

The province nevertheless has its share of refu­gees, including 22,000 from neighboring provinces left homeless by the Tet offensive. But in An Giang even refugees are turned into assets, for they are helping to provide the manpower to launch develop­ment projects that will benefit the economy of the entire region.

One such project is creation of the largest and the only fully mechanized stone quarry in the Delta. Un­der a U8$2,700,000 contract let by the U.S. NavY, the construction combine of RMK-BRJ is building the Nui Sap quarry in Hue Duc district, training Vietnamese to operate it, and will turn it over to the provincial public works department by the end of 1968. The contract specifies that refugees are to be employed on the project, and currently 150 An Giang refugees are being trained in ali phases of quarry operation as they help to carve the new site out of the face of Nui Sap Mountain.

When the quarry's first bargeload of crushed rock goes down the Nui Sap Canal in June 1968, public works construction projects throughout the Delta will go into high gear. One project that will use up tons

of rock from Nui Sap is the repair of the entire length of the region's principal trade road, Route 4 leading to Saigon.

Refugees also wili be employed, according to pres­ent plans, when the province's rural electrification program is launched later this year. An Giang is a pioneer in this form of refugee relief and rehabili­tation, for the province has one of the oldest and best regulated refugee programs in the Delta-not because conditions of warfare within its borders have generated waves of refugees, but becauSe tradition­ally peaceful conditions have attracted those seeking refuge. An Giang is the most pacified province in the nation.

Unfriendly to vc Conditions are not conducive to Viet Cong infiltra­

tion or to the spread of communism in An Giang. N early fi~ years ago military and civil authorities in the province conducted a thoroughgoing, almost dragnet-type pacification campaign, flushing out Viet Cong and their sympathizers from border to border. The cleansing drive has been followed up since then by RegionalForces company patrols, Popular Forces platoon surveillance and Revolutionary Development team action to keep the province's 257 hamletsgen­erally free from communist infestation. GOvernment reaction forces, as well as farmers and tradespeople, are well served by a network of roads and canals. The land is flat and unforested, agriculturally de­veloped and thickly populated by 400,000 citizens, so there is little natural cover and there are few hiding places for Viet Cong marauders.

1

There is almost no poverty by Asian standards, and many of An Giang's sturdy people are Hoa Hao by religious conviction. The three million members of this Buddhist sect in the Delta have been vig­orously anti-communist since 1946 when the commu­nists made the mistake of executing Huynh Phu So, the Hoa Hao's founder and leader. Hoa Haoarmies took to the field against the communists under five of their own generals, including Tran Van Soai and the legendary Le Quang Vinh. (Vinh, known as "Ba Cut," cut off the tip of his trigger finger to swear an oath of vengeance in blood. He later was executed by the Ngo Dinh Diem regime.) . Sometimes the Hoa Hao battalions fought against the French and some­times they fought on the side of the French; occa­sionally they coopemted with Diem troops and often they clashed with them. But always they fought the communists, first the Viet Minh, then the Viet Cong, and fought them savagely. Along with other reli­gious-sect armies, the RGa Hao a decade ago buried their arms. or surrendered' them to the government. But the bitterness against the murderers of their prophet remains unsoftened in Hoa Hao hearts to­day. An Giang is strongly Hoa Hao. Few commu­nist fish can swim in this sea of people.

The number of communist-stl\ged "incidents" in An Giang-kidnapings,. murders, explosions, arson, etc.~is among the lowest in the Republic of Viet­nam: an average of30 a month. Communist terror tactics, sometimes effect,ive in insecure areas, boom­erang on the Viet Cong in. An Giang. The people react strongly to the communist destruction, for in­stance, of a schoolhouse the people themselves have built in a self-help project, and such incidents have been followed, at popular demand, by repressive measures ruinoliS to the VC's shaky infrastructure. When an American of the International Voluntary Services named David Gitelson, a 25-year-old social

2

worker who had won the hearts of Hue Duc villagers, was murdered by the communists in January 1968, more than 500 men, women and children spontaneous­ly marched to the district town to express their grief and indignation.

The Viet Cong "incident" rate of less than one a day for the entire province varied little, either be­fore or after the Tet offensive was launched. Viet Cong units in An Giang-a handful of companies broken up into small, scattered bands-found them­selves too weak and disorganized to contribute to the communists' offensive. And Viet Cong from neighboring provinces-who in the past had invaded An Giang to perpetrate more than one grisly atrocity in the border district of Hue Duc-havefound it wise in recent months t" leave the province undefiled by their activities. Like most Delta people, the Viet Cong relish the famous rice grains that An Giang exports. Presumably they do not want to do any­thing to slow that export flow, for they must eat too. And the export trade provides them with road­side "tax" collections between An Giang's borders and Saigon's markets, which buy 100,000 tons of An Giang rice every year, plus 1,175 tons of fish.

Individual communists appreciate An Giang's calm orderliness as much as the local people do, even if the National Liberation Front must see peaceful An Giang as a roadblock in the way of revolution. Viet Cong are known to use the province as a "rest and recreation" area, with fatigued guerrillas traveling there singly or in small, tourist-like coveys. Even communists become weary of war at times, and An Giang has an outstanding tourist attraction: its daily life vividly illustrates just how rich Vietnam could be if a cease-fire came to all 44 prmnnces.

The Refugee Problem So while it remains almost immune to war's strife,

This new maternity.dispensary building (background) has lust been dedicated at the Nui Choc refugee resettlement village. In it are a midwife and a public health nUiSe.

3

At the Nui Choc refugee resettlement village. Hue Duc district offici_ als hand out farm tools, fertilizer and rice seeds to the settlers.

4

Le Thi Nghe (sitting in hammock) is joined by neighbors as they celebrate the first birthday of her baby girl. The party is being held in the Nui Tuong refugee camp in An Giang's Hue Duc dis­trict. Nghe and her family come to the camp 20 days ogo from embattled Vinh Long. There ore 104 families in the compo

An Giang has its war refugees-because its reputa­tion as an enclave of peace has spread throughout the Delta and beckons would-be deserters of the com­munist fold. None of the current refugees are An Giang people; they are those who fled communist rule and war's destruction in surrounding provinces like Vinh Long, Sadec, Phong Dinh and Kien Giang, making their way by roads, swamp paths and water­ways to the lush lands along the Bassac River.

Prior to the Tet offensive An Giang was on .the verge of running out of refugees-just when it was encouraging the new policy of writing into contracts the requirement that refugees be employed on cer­tain development projects.

Since April 1966, a total of 1,650 refugee families -some 11,550 persons-had been given new home­sites and building grants in 22 resettlement villages throughout the province. In An Giang's two refugee camps-staging areas from which displaced persons are either returned to their homes or are sent to new homes in resettlement villages-there remained only 150 families of about 1,050 persons. Provincial ref­ugee service personnel, military civic action officers responsible for distributing charitable organizations' collections of American-donated supplies, and U.S. field personnel of CORDS (Civil Operations and Rev­olutionary Development Support) found for the first time in months that their supplies on hand exeeeded the refugees' needs. A British Red Cross nurse /!ent out from London to help treat An Giang'/! refugees applied for a transfer to an area that needed her services more urgently because, she said, "I have nev­er seen refugees so well fed and in such good health."

Then came the communists to shatter the lunar new year truce in neighboring areas of the Delta, as they did in coordinated attacks on 102 cities and towns from the 17th to the 10th parallel. Twenty­two thousand refugees flocked into An Giang al-

mollt overnight. In most provinces of the country all schools were

closed with the start of the Tet offensive so refugees could be bedded down in them. An Giang was one of the few provill,Ce$tO keep its school j;ystem operat­big. . The weather was b;.iJmy and it was the dry season in the Delta. Tents, Shelter half~ tarPaulins and local building materials were available,so the new ;waveofrefugees camped out along the canal banks. inCho Moi, Chau.Thanh, Hue Due and Thot Not districts' i ". .

The Tet offenSIve waned, and the refUgees I!tarted llloving-b;!c!t to. their· old homes as government tOrcel!

sec.uredthe°a-s. Within six weeks some 6,000 of them had returned home. Mollt<w;the rel1laining 16;000 were expected to follow mif in the coming weeks. The provincial refugee service meanwhile continued to hand out relief allotments from the 3,100,OOO-pial!ter fund sent to Long Xuyen by the Minilltry of Social Welfare and Refugee .Affairs in Saigon. Each refugee received 30 piasters a day plus I!tocb of rice, grain, canned milk, cooking oil and mosquito nets. Three mediea1 teams from the provincial public health service gave the refugees preventive inoculations and treated their ills.

Room for More Few of the Tet-offensive refugees were expected

to reniain as permanent residents of An Giang. But if some should find it impossible to return to their homes in neighboring provinces, An Giang was pre­pared to receive them. The capacity of the prove inee's two refugee camps is 450 families, or more than 3,000 persons. And homesites are available in IDa1!,Y of the 22 resettlement villages.

One of the largest of these villages has thepoten­tiality of becoming even larger-a great belt of inter­connected settlements of former refugees stretching

5

6

Le Van Thinh, 48, was elected as their representative by the refugees settling in Nui Choc resettlement village. He fled Viet (ong terrorism in Phung Hiep district of Phong Dinh province in January 1966, now is helping other refugees get settled in An Giang.

At the Nui Choc refugee resettlement village, each family has a plot of land 20 by 60 meters on which to build a house and plant a garden. In the foreground are fish pond and a garden of gourds.

21 kilometers along both banks of the N ui Choc Canal. If the need arises, and if the military succeeds in insuring a greater degree of security along present­ly undeveloped stretches of this border-area canal, then the present N ui Choc village could become the core of the nation's largest refugee resettlement cen­ter, one capable of housing at least 2,000 families.

Nui Choc, established in January 1966, now houses 302 families of 1,917 persons who originally migrated from Vinh Long, Phong Dinh and Kien Giang, most of them from VC-controlled areas and the rest from conte8ted areas. Military operations and Viet Cong terrorism drove them from their homes.

In Nui Choc, each family has a plot of land 20 by 60 meters on which to build a house and plant a gar­den, and in addition the members of each family till a half-hectare of riceland three kilometers from the resettlement village. Each family receives 5,000 pias­ters (US$42.40) as a building fund plus U.S.-import­ed building materials. .i\nd each settler, regardless of age, receives the value in piasters of 1.5 kilos of rice per month for six months.

Supplementing these grants and the income they earn from their gardens andtice plots, the settlers work as farm laborers on nearby rice plantations dur­ing the planting and harvesting seasons, catch fish in the adjacent Nui Choc Canal between seasons, and are developing a small-scale cottage industry. A pre­fabricated hut donated to the village from U.S. AID stocks now is going up, and in it 20 sewing machines and a number of looms will be installed for the

,settlers' use. Le Van Thinh, 48, elected by the refugees as their

representative, serves as the link between the re­settlement center and its administrative parent, Vong Dong hamlet of Vong The village, and with the Hue Duc district chief, Captain Nguyen N goc Diep. Thinh and Diep recently presided at the dedication of a ne'"

maternity-dispensary building staffed by a pubHc health nurse and a midwife, and now they are work­ing on plans for a school to he built in the village so its 150 schoolchildren need not walk half a kilo­meter to the nearest hamlet school.

"I came from Phung Hiep district of Phong Dinh province on January 6, 1966," 'says Thinh. "My 'dis­

, trict was infested with Viet,Cong. They killed three , youths of the village self-defense force and captured 16. 1 took my wife and six cWldren, rented a boat x_ and came here to Hue Due. ~. had to leave the three hectares of riceland my ~ts had bought in 1950. Yes, 1 made more money in Fhong Dinh, but it is more secure here. Life mayB!,lt,. .. be so pros­perous, but it is better. I am quite wiJijjig to lower mY stalldjlrd Of living in order to ebtain~urity, for that is SIt.muen more neceSS/lry toa family. I hOpe, of eourse,thatpeaee will com~.tothe eountry.Then we eaD,go bacK to our old~Btit-~untii then I am ma!9ntmy home here':;'f"~~,j\~.gOOci, home. And I muhlllping in getti~ ~,t!;seitIedhere, helping'io form;' real co~!' ; ,'" . ,

Qffljefamilies in Nui C1i0e,..,~~ liVed tltere IongerthiiIithe initial six-month' Pernid in which' Set­thif.; reCeive food allowances. Tirey ljOware on their oWn, ' tlO longer refugees, bilt eitkens Of An Giang. The remaining 61 families still are cOnsidered refu­gees, for they have a few more months of food ra­tions to draw.

Nui Sap Quarry

Helping to increase the village's .standard of liv41g­is the fact that a number of its citizens are among, the refugees hired to build and operate the Nui Sap quarry five kilometers away. Also working in the quarry are men from the Nui Tuong refugee camp another three kilometers up the N ui Choc canal. Es­tablished in October 1967, the camp now holds 104

7

, :":

The Vietnamese operator of a huge one-and.three.quorter-yard drag line swings a bucket full of mud to the bank of a new access canal being dug to link the RMK-8RJ quarry with the Nui Sop conal.

8

Barges like this will haul crushed rock from the Nui Sop quarry to Long Xuyen and beyond.

families of 728 persons, ~ost of them from Phong Dinh province. Refugees usually spend less than 60 days in this camp before being returned to their homes or resettled in new homes.

At the Nui Sap quarry, R. E. (Rudy) Wright 6f Redding,California, RMK-BRJ's project general ~­perintendent, said the 150 l'efugees working on the site soon will be increased by another 50 as more land is bought for quarry expansion. When the quarry is in full operation and ready to be turned over to An Giang, it will be staffed by 125 workmen, 80 of . tIlem refugees, and the weekly payroll will total 500,000 piasters. At present, in addition to the refugee work force, there are seven Americans of RMK-BRJ (Raymond Morrison Knudson-Brown, Root & Jones) plus 73 non-refugee Vietnamese re­cruitedin Saigon, Can Tho, Long Xuyen and else­where in the Delta.

The quarry has been under construction since the end of November 1967, and already the refugees have proved their worth. Within four months 13 had been promoted to drillers, three to carpenters and one was

. named foreman. Others are learning to operate some of the heavy equipment on the site, which includes such awesome machines as a one-and-three-quarter­yard dragline used to excavate an access canal to the N ui Sap Canal, a one-and-a-quartercyardshovel,

. three bulldozers, eight trucks, five compressors, six drills, six 150kw generators, a 200-ton-an-hour crush­'er, twopayloaders, three welding machines, a number of jackhammers, three power units, 15 trailers, two radios and seven huge 30-ton barges. . Most of the equipment came by barge from Saigon and Can Tho, but some was flown in to a 330-meter-Iong airstrip built by RMK-BRJ near the quarry.

"By the time we Americans pull out," says Wright, "the Vietnamese will be thoroughly capable of run­ning this quarry on a full-production basis."

That basis would Call for as much as 25,000 tons of crushed rook going down the canal every month.

RMK-BRJ joins 4~ .•. ( /thEll' 1ninmg COIlltraciol's have been f{J1' decades, but the chaniz;l.tion, will aocolmt all granite taken from t:;~rl

The importance of tile of Vietnam stems from is in short suppl3:' and h~ .. Ti>·· Mountain is one of the primes~j~~ the Delta centering S'1l!l;.··.tlje.·· canllllcwmk.

village adjacent to ~1~!~~;Pf~~'=~:l::~~~'6r is a national priority area. velopmentprilgram. .One ... ~;.J~ the projects sparked by R is tile building of road netw'~rli~.1;§. produce to . IDIll'ket. GrlJ,vel. in any road-b\iilding pr(>gIan:,;

sour~ of.mosfof tile ~:~~~ few small quarrwUn the Doo, but Nul' SaP' Mountain ¢'·1~t.a'1I souree, .. FQrY(l3ts, howelv~i~~:i~:~;!~0 prod~ and delivery 0

'i'he village of Thoai Son is ii·ttisap MouhWn"'-not oniy physically over til(! little community, but economically as· it provides the livelihood for most of its peoPlean.d forthe".water­borne people who transport rock dOwn the canal. For years the Vietnamese have been workfug the west face of Nul Sap Mountain with primitive too~ to ex­tract a hard, fine-qUlllity granite on Which the entire region has depended for road building and for con- .. crete mixing. Each of the 49· mining contractors, including the provincial public works department, works a 10-meter face of the old quarrY, and each

Refugees from Nul Choc reseHlement village work at the Nul Sap quarry.

Seen from the top of Nul Sap Mountoin, the new quarry takes shape. The quarry at Nui Sap is the largest and the only fully mechanized quarry in the Mekong Delta.

11

Before new crops requiring irrigation can be introduced to An Giang farms, the land must be leveled. With some 4,000 farmers in the province planning to grow IR-8 "miracle" rice this year, the leveling project requires mechanization. Tractors and attachments like this, brought to Vietnam under the U.S. aid program, have arrived in An Giang to help farmers level their lands under a cooperative hire project.

12

• I

contractor extracts an average of 13 cubic meters of rock a day. This must then be broken up by frail­looking but tireless women in straw sampan hats who pound away at the rocks with little hammers, hour after hour. And then it must be transported down the canal to Long Xuyen and beyond in a motley fleet of barges, steamboats, motorboats and sampans.

This production for years averaged less than 240,000 cubic meters annually. There is much good rock still left in the original quarry on the west face of the mountain, but the Vietnamese cannot break it down any faster. In mid-1966, 13 Seabees of Team No. 0908 of the U.S. Navy's Mobile Construc­tion Battalion 9 arrived at Nui Sap to help the pro­vincial public works department expand its quarry operations. They installed a crusher producing 30 cubic meters of rock an hour near the public works department's face of the old quarry, and they cut a road to the top so dump trucks could reach the crush­er's intake conveyor belt. This boosted Nui Sap's production considerably, but the total was still far short of construction requirements in the Delta. As a result, Vietnam still must import stone and gravel from the philippines. Yet all the gravel the Delta needs could be supplied by Nui Sap Mountain.

So the eastern face of the mountain was opened up to RMK-BRJ with instructions to build a modern new quarry around a crusher that would have a capacity of 200 tons an hour. There was no fear that .such a quarry would deprive the people of Thoai Son of their Iivelihood-Vietnam's requirements of gravel are more than enough to absorb the total production of the new quarry plus all the production that the 49 contractors on the other side of the mountain could possibly achieve.

Crushed rock from Nui Sap soon will be changing the face of the Delta, going into roads to link farms with markets, going into concrete for the building

of bridges and schoolhouses and pigstys. and hamlet offices. And by the time the last piece of hard gran­ite has been blasted from the face of Nui Sap Moun­tain by a Vietnamese "powder monkey," the prosper­ity and peace that mark life in An Giang today will hopefully be extended to Vietnam's 43 other prov­inces.· The materials to win i,the other war" in Viet­nam, the war to improve the well-being of the Peas­ant in his hamlet, are now about to be produced in volume in An Giang. Helping to produce them will be refugees set adrift by the fighting war.

Raising Living Standards Nor is this the only breakthrough An Giang has

scored in "the other war," the Revolutionary Devel­opment campaign to win the minds and hearts of the people. Take the field of farm credit . . . and the introduction of "miracle" rice.

An experiment launched in one district two years ago to give low-eost credit to 203 Vietnamese peas­antS--smallJandowners or sharecroppers of ThotNot district with neither capital nor collateral, but am­bitious men willing to gamble on new crops and new methods-has succeeded so well that the program now covers all four of An Giang's districts. This year more than 4,000 farmers have volunteered to grow crops new to this Delta province.

The credit scheme, coupled with the introduction of field crops, vegetables and Filipino "miracle" rice grown under the guidance of experts from four na­tions, is raising living standards dramatically in An Giani. More prosperous today because of the super­vised credit and crop-diversification program are such Thot Not farmers as these:

• Nguyen Van Hoa, 36, of Thanh Phuoc hamlet, Trung An village. Hoa paid 1,000 piasters interest for a loan "in kind" valued at 20,000 piasters. With it he planted soybeans on 6,000 square meters of the

13

hectare of land he rents. He harvested 900 kilos, sold his seed crop for 50 piasters a kilo, paid off his loan and pocketed 24,000 piasters in profit. It was the first spare cash Hoa had earned in all his years of bartering his way from one rice season to the next.

- Nguyen Van Pham, 50, of Dong Thanh hamlet, My Thoi village. With his loan, Pham planted four­tenths of a hectare to soybeans. One hundred days later he harvested 720 kilos, and sold them for 36,000 piasters. The profit was enough to start his son, Nguyen Van Lon, 21, at Saigon University, where he is now studying law-the first member of the clan ever to go to college.

For both Hoa and Pham, the profit from soybeans came as a windfall, for the crop was planted on land ordinarily lying idle between rice seasons.

The plan that brought them prosperity is part of Ii long-term governmental effort to boost food pro­duction. by inducing peasants, including those like Hoa arid Pham who have no investment capital or col­lateral, to grow new cropS and to use modern methods of· agriculture. Ultimately· the program is designed to transform these peasants from subsistence farm­ers feeding only tireir own families to commercial farmerS marketing surplus food for urban and for­eign CflnSumption.

Twin FeatUl'es The credit plan, administered by five ag~mcies with

representatives in Long Xuyen, is characterized by two distiilctive features:

-The loans are !lot in cash, but in the form of seed, fertilizer, inseCticide, sprayers, irrigation pumps and' jioultijf;

- The farmers' utilization of these "package loa!ls" is closely supervised-all the way from land prepara­tion through planting and harvesting to marketing of crop&-'-by two dozen Vietnamese, Chinese, FiIi­pi!lo and American agricultural advisers.

This supervision, along with guarantees of an as­sured market for experimental crops, cuts credit risks so much that participating farmers need pay only one percent interest per month. That is one-tenth to one-twentieth the interest they would have to pay to local moneylenders even if they had collateral. And with such expert guidance available to t\lem, the farmers are reaping harvests so rich that repay­ment of loans is averaging well over 90 percent.

The original 203 An Giang farmers who took part in the pioneering credit and crop-diversification scheme in 1966 grew soybeans on 155 hectares, and some experimented WIth vegetables and watermelons. Within a year the program had grown twenty,fold. Many of the new recruits to the program did not re­quire credit, but did avail themselves of the technical advice offered by the four nations' experts. The loans and the step-by-step guidance given An Giang's farmers helped them to plant more than 3,230 hec­tares to new crops in 1967. These included 3,000 hectares planted to soybeans, corn (maize) and other field crops, more than 100 hectares to watermelons, 120 hectares to IR-8 "miracle" rice, and 100 hectares to vegetables equally new to the Delta like onions, garlic, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers and "yard­long" Chinese beans.

This year some 4,000 farmers of Thot Not; Cho Moi, Hue Duc and Chau Thanh districts have agreed to participate in the crop-diversification program; though not all will require credit. Most of the 4,000 will be planting the IR-8 rice for the first time, and some will be experimenting with the even newer and more improved IR-5 rice, also developed at Los Banos in the Philippines. It is expected that as much as 2,000 hectares will be planted to these new rice strains, that 2,000 of the farmers will be supplement­ing their incomes by growing two crops of water­melons in this one year, and that 2,000 of the farm-

Some 4,000 An Giang farmers this year will be trying the Philippines' lR·8 "miracle" rice for the first time. Unlike the one.crop.o-year floating or "indigo" rice, which can be broadcast in the paddies, IR·8 must be transplanted by hand ofter 20 days in seed bed. An Giang formers can experiment with this new crop because of a supervised credit program offering low-cost farm credit.

Tran Ngoc Diep (right) inspects a prize hog. From 30 locol pigs and 100 imported Yorkshires, Diep and his brother hove raised more than 1,000 crossbred pigs that have seen sold throughout the province of An Giang.

15

ers also will ~ growing vegetables. Soybeans and other field crops will be cut hack to 2,000 hectares this year to permit more emphasis to be plac~ on improved rice and to bring the province's production of soybeans more closely in line with local demand. The price of soybeans is dropping while rice is rising.

Twenty varieties of sorghum (known as kaoliang in its native China, where it is used for making bean curd, wine and even material for building huts) have been planted on two 500-square-meter demonstration plots. This test may induce some An Giang farm­ers next year to plant the versatile sorghum stalk in order to feed it to livestock.·

Improving the. Land The program that has brought these new foods to

th~ Delta entails land improvement and water control measures as well as eropdiversifieation. In addition to utilizing idle land and idle manpower hours, the program is aimed at putting more protein into Viet­namese consumers' diets while putting more piasters into the farmers' pOckets.· As side effects, the pro­gi-am is expanding the peasants' knowledge and tech­nieal competence through the counseling it provideS, and· it is . introducing the people to, or strengthening

.. their ties to; governmental SIlrviees and cooperatives SpoJls!)rlng the program. Arid it is helping to de­crease somewhat ·the overdependence .by the farm­ersof:An. Giang on a single crop-fIl>ating rice­that is subject to. the dangers of river flooding and rat infestation.

Before the crop-diversifieatil>n pr!)gram was . launched in March 1966, 94 percent I>f An Giang's 150,000 hectares of cultivated land was devl>ted tl> rice paddies, but only 273 I>f thl>se hectares were planted to twI>-Crops-a-year transplanted rice. The rest of the paddyland was devl>ted tl> fl!>ating rice, the low-yielding "indigo" strain that produces only

16

I>ne harvest a year because the growing time is seven to nine ml>nths. A hectare gives only abl>ut 1,500 kill>s, selling for eight tl> 12 piasters a kill>. The paddyland had always remained idle between rice sea­Sl>ns, and at least 30,000 hectares I>f this half-used land were deemed suitable fl>r planting field crops during the I>ff season because they had sufficient elevatil>n to shed the annual fll>odwaters many weeks befl>re the rest I>f the prl>vince.

So the agricultural experts' attack I>n the problem tl>l>k tWI> cl>urses: an effl>rt to get field crops like

. sl>ybeans and corn planted I>n unused paddyland dur­ing the dry season, and an effort to replace the I>ne­crop-a-year floating rice with the two-crops-a-year transplanted' rice. There was a sense I>f nrgencY about this mission, fl>r year after year the rice crop in the Delta-Vietnam's breadbasket-had been de­clining as farmers left their lands, either because I>f war or because I>f the lure I>f better-paying jl>bs in the cities. The year 1964 was the last year that

.. Vietnam exported rice; since then rice has had to be imported in ever-increasing quantities to feed urban populatil>ns.

Befl>re the crop-diversifieatil>n prl>gram had ad­vanced very far, its sponsl>rs realized that the num­ber I>f farmers able to participate wl>uld be sharply curtailed unless wme means were prl>vided to I>btain the necessary seed, fertilizer, insecticide and sprayers to grl>W their crl>p pmfitably, and unless they cl>uld I>btain the equipment necessary to level their lands and pumps tl> irrigate them. Floating rice requires U!> irrigatil>n; it is grl>wn during the rainy seawn . Transplanted rice needs irrigation, particularly fl>r its second cmp of the year. Vegetables and field crops alsl> require land-draining and irrigatil>n. And befl>re irrigatil>n methods can be effective the land must be leveled. To give farmers withl>ut invest­ment capital the chance to experiment with· new

At the demonstration farm a Vietnamese expert inspects the first test crop of sorghum. If successful, An Giang far­mers may be induced to grow the stalk as livestock fodder.

At the agriculture service demonstration farm in An Giang's My Thoi village, King Chu.wu, one of the nine agricultural experts from Taiwan on the Chinese Agricultural Technical Mission to Vietnam (CATMJVN) team, inspects the progress of Guatamala sweet corn.

Onions are being grown in An Giang for the first time. Until now only Tuyen Due province in the Cen­tral Highlands had grown onions. Demonstration plot tests in An Giang have shown that farmers can earn 400,000 piasters from one hectare of onions.

17

crops, therefore, some form of credit had to be made available to them.

Sponsoring Group Five organizations teamed up to sponsor the credit

and crop-diversification program. They were the Vietnamese government's Agricultural. Development Bank (ADB), the An Giang provincial government's agricultural service, the local cooperative caIled the Farmers Association, American and Filipino agricul­tural experts of CORDS, and the Chinese Agricul­tural Technical Mission to Vietnam (CATMjVN), a team of extension specialists brought from Taiwan under a U.S. aid contract with the Republics of Chi­na and Vietnam.

The plan they worked out in 1966 has proved effec­tive, and remains in force today. For no-eollateral loans, advisers from CATM, CORDS and the agri­culture service inspect a loan applicant's farm to see if he isa suitable risk; they determine if he is likely to.~est enough of an extra crop to be able to re­pay the loan. These agricultural experts and the fanners' cooperative advise the ffu.mer on what equip­ment and supplies he would need and can afford if he is to succeed in diversifyi"g his crops. Foreach hectare he farms, the approved applicant has a loan ceiling equivalent in kind to 20,000 piasters. Up to that limit, the Long Xuyen office of the ADB issues credit tickets to the farmer. 'One ticket, for instance, the farmer delivers to a private merchant in eX­change for a water pump. Another ticket he takes to a second merchant for an insecticide sprayer. The farmer takes a ticket to the agriculture service for seed, a ticket to the Farmers Association for ferti­lizer, another ticket to a private merchant for insecti­cide. Under a new project, the farmer now can take a ticket to a private poultry farm and get 50 layers.

18

The various recipients of the credit tickets redeem them for cash at the ADB. Two months after the harvest each farmer's loan faIls due, and the agri­culture service acts as the ADB's collection agent. The agriculture service, which needs abundant stocks of seed for the expanding crop-diversification pro­gram, buys at least half the farmer's crop. From the money due the farmer for his crop, the agricul­ture service first deducts the amount of his loan plus interest, and reimburses the ADB.

Emphasis on Rice As the program matures, emphasis is being shifted

from soybeans to the improved Filipino rice, selected at Los Banos' International Rice Research Institute from 10,000 varieties studied. On the 120 hectares sown to IR-8 rice in An Giang during the 1967-68 growing season (with the last transplanting in De­cember), some 600 farmers in 15 villages found their yields five to 10 times greater than the floating rice they had traditionaIly grown. Instead of the 1,500 kilos per hectare averaged with floating rice, those experimenting with IR-8 averaged 4,000 to 5,000 ki­los. And they learned from the results of a demon­stration plot test that a yield of 9,510 kilos was pos­sible if all modern methods and heavy application of fertilizer were employed.

The An Giang farmer discovered that six-tenths of a hectare (6,000 square meters) planted to IR-8 could earn him 60,000 piasters, for he could seIl his seed crop at 20 piasters a kilo--twice the price of float­ing rice seed. IR-8 could be sold at a premium be­cause it is the highly valued "white" rice, while floating or "indigo" rice is reddish in color. Instead of having to wait seven to nine months for his crop to mature, he reaped his first harvest of IR-8 within four months, including 20 days in the seed bed before

With his 3lFyeor-old brother Tron Ngoc An, this progressive farmer, Tran Ngoc Diep,30, (above) operates a six-hectare farm in An Giang's My Thai village that has been so successful that formers from kilometers around come to study its methods. The brothers have sold thousands of chickens like these to local farmers, to the provincial governement to stock refugee resettlement forms, and to the supervised credit program's borrowers.

19

transplanting. He found that IR-S's stiff, strong, short straw prevented it from lodging-falling over -when the plant was heavily fertilized or when it was buffeted by wind and rain. Hardy, adaptable, nutritious, IR-8, he agreed, was truly a "miracle" rice. And he could get two crops a year instead of one by draining and leveling his land, by using plenty of fertilizer and by instaIring an irrigation pump.

This year 26,700 hectares will be planted to IR-S throughout South Vietnam (a target goal cut from 44,000 hectares by the communists' Tet offensive) and of that total An Giang farmers will be planting up to 2,000 hectares. To prepare so much land for the new crop, mechanization is necessary. The pro­gram's sponsors have bronght in tractors and attach­ments imported by U.S. AID to level farmers' lands under a cooperative hireprojeet. In addition to the IR-8 seed purchased by the agriculture service from An Giang farmers'last crop, SO tons of seed are be­ing shipped from Saigon to the province for this ·y~scrop--part of the originai 1,500 tons that came from.the Philippines in 1967.

Rllcently introduced' to An Giang was Los Baiios' latest "miracle" rice, IR~5, which shows qualities even better thall IR-8's. While IR-5 has. a growing period

. of 150 ~ys to IR-8's 120 days, the additional matur­mgtinre is not enough to prevent double-cropping. IR-5 has.a hardiness that withstands typhoons and monsoon rains is more resistant than IR-S to disease and inf~o~,and, ~ordiug to cO!lsumers, it tastes better. DUI-ing'the last season,. two hectares on a farm neat Long Xuyellowned by two brothers, Tran Ngoc An, 31. and T~n Ngoc Diep, 30, produced more than 7,000 kiIOS'o!.IRt' seed in the first planting.

~Farmers An and Diep are among the most progressive

farmers in the locality. With one million piasters provided by their father, an ex-government adminis-

20

trative clerk turned retail merchant, they bought six hectares of riceland in Tay An hamlet of My Thoi village in 1964. Today the farm is worth 25 million piasters. The brothers have been helped by the tech­nical advice given them.by the nine Chinese of CATM and the 13 Vietpamese experts of the agriculture service who are based at an adjacent demonstration farm. An and Diep have availed themselves of a loan under the supervised credit progr!,m, but now have progressed so far that they are cooperating in the program as lenders instead of borrowers.

The two brothers dropped rice as a main crop when they bought the farm, retaining only two hectares for such experiments as their recent one with IR-5. The rest of the land they devoted to animal husbandry and to the crops needed to feed their animals, plus garden crops, bananas and mangoes.

In 1964 they traveled to Saigon to buy 500 chickens about three months old, including White Rock, White Leghorn, New Hampshire, Plymouth and a Japanese import, Da To. They crossbred the strains one with another, but did not include local strains. Today they sell 500 eggS a day in Saigon and have 5,000 layers. Six months ago the brothers had more than 10,000 chickens, but they sold 3,100 to the provincial gov­ernment to stock New Life Hamlet resettlement farms and 2,000 to borrowers under the supervised

. credit program. In addition they are selling layers to private farmers throughout the province.

It was not until 1967 that the brothers went into th; pig-breeding business. With a loan from the su­pervised credit program they bought 30 local pigs and wentto Saigon to buy 100 Yorkshire pigs weigh­ing about 20 kilos. They now have 100 crossbred pigs and have sold more than 1,000. The brothers' farm has become a showplace, and is as effective in teach­ing local farmers modern methods as is the provincial government's demonstration farm across the road.

; I

Demonstration Results The demonstration farm, run by the agriculture

service with CATM and CORDS assistance and Min­istry of Agriculture financing, has opened many farmers' eyes to the possibilities inherent in new crops. From the demonstration farm, they have learned that:

• They can get 400,000 piasters from one hectare of onions;

• They can get 90 times more money from "Su­gar Baby" watermelons than from the same acreage planted to floating rice, and they can get two crops instead of one crop a year--one before Tet, one after Tet, the holiday season when watermelons are in great demand;

• They can gross up to 180,000 piasters per hec­tare from two crops of soybeans a year compared with 18,000 piasters per hectare from one annual crop of floating rice;

• They can get 35 percent more of a harvest from "yard-long" Chinese beans and market them for three times as much as the local stringbean sells for;

• They can get more than 10 times the return from planting IR-8 than from floating rice.

Not all farmers who came to the demonstration farm and saw these results were eager to try the new crops. For one thing, tradition opposed change. For another, consumers relished the familiar taste fIf floating rice. And, of course, new crops entailed more work. When irrigation has to be used, land preparation can be a back-breaking chore. When rice

like IR-8 or IR-5 is planted, it cannot be broadCast in the field like floating rice. It must be transplanted by hand, plant by plant, after its 20 days in th<;! seed bed. Like most of the new crtips, it requires much fertilizer. Floating rice ahnost grows itself; trans­

planted rice must be nursed along. And .two crops mean twice the work of one.

But for the 4,000 farmers of An Giang whQ this year will introduce IR-8 and other new cro~, the extra piasters in their pockets after the harvest will reward them for the extra work they will have to put into their fields. This year they will be taking' the first step in the transition from subsistence farmers to commercial farmers. Says a CORDS, agricultural scientist in Long XllYen: '

"U nti! the nation's farms are producing a snrplus that can be marketed commercially in the cities and abroad, economic progress in South Vietnam will lag behind its potential. Commercial farming would en­able Vietnam to produce its proper share of the world's food supply, create the wealth and foreign exchange needed by a growing nationaleconQInY and, by increasing productivity of the individual farmer, would free underemployed farmhands to take jobs in an expanding industrial economy."

The farmers of An Giang taking part in the super­vised credit program will be the ,pioneers to prove . the truth of the maxim that a strong economy; i~­eluding a strong industry, must have a strong agrI­cultural base. •