Diversified responses to contemporary pressures on sloping agricultural land: Thai farmer’s perception of mountainous landscapes in northern Vietnam

Mountains cover approximately three quarters of the Vietnam, mainly in the north, west, and central parts of the country. Among the 38 ethnic minorities inhabiting the northern mountains of Vietnam, the Thai population is the second largest. Cultural landscapes and traditional agricultural uplands shaped by the Thai have a long history and represent a mosaic of paddy and vegetable fields along rivers and springs, forests and plantations of trees on slopes. This pattern is now changing significantly, which results in a diversification of the fields shaped by Thai farmers. This study deals with understanding the pressures driving the changes, the new state of the upland agriculture, and the way the Thai of the Son Thinh mountain (Yen Bai, Vietnam) respond to sustain their upland farming systems. Land quality indicators (LQIs) are identified using the pressure–state–response (PSR) framework. Sixty completed questionnaires with 65 closed questions each using a five-point Likert scale were collected in 2016. The results show that Thai farmers nowadays apply a wider-scale solutions to deal with the sustainability of agricultural upland on the slopes as compared to a limited number of traditional farming techniques that were used in the past. Climate change hazards (floods, droughts, landslides, extreme cold, and flash floods), the scarcity of irrigation water, and agricultural land put pressure on the slopes. The most noticeable socioeconomic impacts are migration, population growth, and unstable input and output prices. The most considerable changes in the state of the land quality are soil erosion, land degradation, and local cultivation practices. Modifying cultivation options, applying soil conservation practices, improving indigenous techniques, and implementing agricultural land use policies are the most significant responses to modify land use and its pressures. Responses of the Thai farmers on sustainable sloping land use are put in a structural model with a horizontal diversification strategy. Recommendations concern mainstreaming the local indigenous knowledge on agricultural land use, land management policies, and implementing the LQIs based on PSR framework for sustainable land use planning on the slopes in Vietnam.