ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the multiple impacts of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation on three rural settlements in the area often described as Vietnam’s rice bowl and where livelihoods and the nature of the local economic base, including farming, have changed radically in the past two decades. Rice no longer dominates crop production in the settlements; in fact, it has virtually disappeared, giving way to fruit orchards. Fruit is the key driver of the diversification of the economic base in the study settlements. This, in turn, is triggered by the rising demand from urban consumers as well as by the growth of industry and services in local urban centres. Employment in these sectors absorbs large numbers of increasingly mobile rural dwellers, especially but not only the younger generations, and contributes substantially to rural households’ incomes and capacity to invest in fruit production. Within the settlements, the expansion of activities related to the fruit trade has opened up opportunities for wealthier and poorer groups alike, and contributes to local economic growth and poverty reduction, although with widening income inequality.
