The story of Vietnam’s changing countryside is still unfolding. Beginning in the 1980s, a cascade of changes rippled across the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta. The country spent 25 years mired in conflict, freeing themselves of colonial ties, only to start a new battle: the “irrigation front.”
The canal and sluice gate system tamed the Mekong and the surrounding delta, shifting the flow of the river and the systems of water governance. Money and Vietnamese labor was poured into digging canals and expanding rice production areas throughout the delta. The sluice gate system was put in to control the flood flow during the rainy season.
These paved veins of modernization were combined with Green Revolution farming practices, allowed Vietnam to emerge as a rice production giant. Between 1990 and 2010 Vietnam became one of the region’s leading rice producers. Because the irrigation projects made water available all year, most farms now plant three rice crops per year instead of just one.
This photograph shows a small gas-powered pump transferring water from one field to another during emergence of the Autumn-Winter rice crop.