|  The Mekong Delta may be the rice bowl of southern Vietnam, but until recently very few farmers in Bac Lieu—the second poorest province in the delta, with an annual per capita income of US$380—managed to grow more than one rice crop per year. This was due to tidal inflows of seawater invading the canals that crisscross the province. Only during the rainy season, from June to October, are tidal forces overwhelmed by the outward flow of freshwater from the Mekong River, bringing water and soil salinity down to a level that allows rice cultivation.
The national government decided to remedy the situation by building a network of sluice gates that could be closed at high tide during the dry season to protect rice lands from saline intrusion. Exploiting the Route 1 embankment as an existing line of choke points parallel to the shoreline, though 15 km inland, the Quan Lo-Phung Hiep Water Control Project called for the phased construction of 13 large sluice gates and many smaller ones. Ten of the large gates have been completed since 1993, and as they have come on line, the saline-protected area has steadily expanded, allowing many thousands of rice farmers to grow two or even three crops per year.
“Between 1997 and 2000, our rice production rose from 800 kg per capita to 1,200 kg,” reports Diep Chan Ben, the vice director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.
This clear benefit to rice farmers has come, however, at the expense of their shrimp farming neighbors—a significant minority of the half-million people who live within the boundaries of the saline-protection project—who were cut off from the supplies of brackish water they needed to fill their ponds.
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