The Effects of Soil Erosion in Vietnam

Vietnam is one of the country which have been exponentially increasing in agriculture production these past few years. It breached the rice production market, ranking as high as 5th place worldwide. Of course, every country had experienced challenges due to soil erosion, which leads to numerous problems, on the contrary how did they manage to cope with these things, or even find a solution. The erosion in Vietnam are mostly caused by chemical erosion, an overused amount of chemical fertilizer and plants protection products. The chemical fertilizer are used to improve growth rate of crops, containing additional substance such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium compounds. The over usage of these chemical hardened the soil, and decreased fertility, strengthen pesticides, polluted water and air. In the end it is also toxic to human health and environment. A slightly smaller factor and still a major problem throughout the world is about climate change. Climate change impacts are such as drought and saltwater intrusion, on the contrary it is still seasonal. Drought causes erosion due to effect of wind and flooding. Drying out the soil makes the soil less dense and lighter which then are eroded by the wind. The crops can suffer severe damage from these kinds of things. Lastly, problems from intensive farming and deforestation. Aggressive farming removes the organic matter that binds the soil particle together, making the soil weaker when get exposed to heavy rain. All these are the main part of erosion problems and numerous more soil degradation problems. There are a lot more on the contrary those not mentioned would be minors. Dealing with all these problems for a plethora of years, the Vietnamese have created numerous ways to cope with their problem. Not only the locals were trying to fix their problems, on the contrary the Vietnamese government also took a huge role in helping the situation. Solving the chemical fertilizer, was replaced by organic fertilizer instead. The Vietnamese governments priority was to help organic agriculture to use organic fertilizer. Vietnam have produced organic fertilizer from different materials by using different production technologies, but the production capacity is small and does not meet the demand for organic agriculture. Vietnam government encourages, promotes the organic fertilizer production, application and has the policy to develop the organic fertilizer in Vietnam. When El Nino, it usually have huge impact on Vietnamese drought. Strengthening the reservoir construction, the best way to cope with this is to store as much water as possible before the dryness, and increasing the efficacy of the irrigation systems for it to be spread in wider area for everyone. Moreover Vietnam have also made a very high-tech way to analysis erosions by radiation known as “Fallout radionuclides (FRNs)” they were used for war in the past but now it is used to detect erosions and origins. The concept is to assess soil erosion rates, and compound specific stable isotope analysis, which assists in tracing hot spots of land degradation. Erosions affects the top most fertile layer of soil the most. So, Vietnam, one of the best in agriculture, they mostly suffered from chemical fertilizations, and drought. The government was one of the main influences to solve these problems by bringing the organic fertilizations and strengthening reservoirs to cope with incoming seasonal drought disasters. Lastly one extremely High-Tec tool called “Fallout radionuclides (FRNs)” was used to help detect erosions in an area by radiation.