Farmers’ Behavior for Introducing Livestock to Respond to External Shocks

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to reveal factors to introduce or raise livestock by farmers to respond to external shocks such as rapid economic growth with globalization and extreme weather events. Risk behaviors of farmers, social networks, and credit constraints are considered the main factors in this chapter. The target research area is the northern part of Vietnam around the Red River Delta. The villagers have a traditional home garden system, the so-called VAC, comprising trees for fruit, ponds for aquaculture, and livestock with high resilience. Because of the intrusion of the market economy, the traditional system is collapsing, although livestock can be considered a method to make smooth consumption in response to shocks. This chapter indicates that farmers in the targeted communities are coping with the intrusion of the market economy as an external shock. Raising livestock to generate a profit in the market has gained greater focus. Larger inputs for livestock may have caused environmental degradation and must be examined. Raising livestock is one of the major methods to enhance the resilience of households through smoothing consumption. However, it is probably causing other unexpected problems in the area because of the loss of the stability of the traditional VAC system.