Abstract

Nguyen Van Song and Do Thi Diep

Rice area of the Mekong Delta (MD) has decreased in recent years, especially the shift from rice land into industrial land and saline land due to sea level rise and effects of climate change. In addition, the population growth rate also requires increasingly high demand for rice in the region. By using the dynamic modelling, results showed that the population will be at 26,956.5 thousand inhabitants, paddy land is 993.9 thousand hectares, rice balance will achieve 4729.9 thousand tons in 2050. Scenarios of sea level rise show that the sea level rise to 0.3 m in 2050, corresponding to the rice area is reduced by 0.6 million hectares, the paddy land remained only 851.6 thousand hectares, balance rice reached 2.6 million tons. Although rice yield increased due to intensive investment, the rate of declining rice land due to climate change and industrialization led to rice balance in 2050 only was 2.5 million tons. This is a huge pressure to national food security in the near future. So the strategy set for the MD in the near future is to stabilize rice area, slowing population growth and application of scientific and technical measures to improve productivity and rice output.