Protecting agricultural land under land law in Vietnam

- Propose some recommendations to improve the law on agricultural protection, shorten the gap between legal regulations and the actual requirements of current agricultural land users.

4. Scope of research of the topic

The topic focuses on studying basic theoretical issues on agricultural land as well as the development process of legal regulations on agricultural land in Vietnam; assessing the current situation and analyzing the shortcomings and inadequacies of the law on agricultural land; giving some recommendations and solutions to improve the law to protect agricultural land in Vietnam in the coming time. During the implementation process, the documents were mainly collected in the period from 2003 to present.

5. Theoretical basis and research methods

To achieve the set goals and tasks, the thesis is based on the theory of Marx - Lenin, Ho Chi Minh's thoughts on state and law. The thesis uses the methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, and statistics to achieve the research tasks and objectives.

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6. New points of the topic

In the past, there have been many research topics on agricultural land policies and laws. However, this is a scientific work that studies the law in a relatively comprehensive and systematic way, supplementing theories on the law to protect agricultural land in Vietnam.

The thesis not only points out the shortcomings in legal regulations but also finds out the limitations in the practical application of the law on agricultural land, thereby providing solutions for perfecting the legal system to protect agricultural land in Vietnam in the coming time.

7. Outline of the topic

The law on agricultural land protection is a broad issue, a combination of many branches of law. Due to the research limitations of the thesis, the author only researches and analyzes from the perspective of land law. In addition to the introduction, conclusion and recommendations, the thesis is divided into three chapters, including:

Chapter 1: Basic theoretical issues on agricultural land and agricultural land protection.

Chapter 2: Current status of agricultural land law in Vietnam.

Chapter 3: Solutions to improve the law to protect agricultural land.

CHAPTER 1

BASIC THEORETICAL ISSUES ON AGRICULTURAL LAND AND AGRICULTURAL LAND PROTECTION

1.1. Concept and classification of agricultural land

According to the traditional concept of Vietnamese people, agricultural land is often understood as land for growing rice, crops such as corn, potatoes, cassava and other crops considered to be profitable. However, in reality, the use of agricultural land is relatively diverse, not only for growing rice and crops but also for raising livestock, aquaculture or growing perennial plants... [39].

According to Article 42 of the 1993 Land Law, agricultural land is land defined as land mainly used for agricultural production such as cultivation, animal husbandry, aquaculture or agricultural research and experimentation. Article 2 of Decree No. 64/CP dated September 27, 1993 stipulates: "Agricultural land allocated to households and individuals for agricultural production purposes includes agricultural land for growing annual crops, agricultural land for growing perennial crops, land with water surface for aquaculture...". This concept does not cover all types of land used for agricultural purposes.

Land classification is important in developing legal regulations regulating the legal regime for each type of land, creating conditions for the management and use of each type of land reasonably, economically and effectively.

Before the 1987 Land Law, legal documents regulating the legal regime of land in our country divided land into 4 types: agricultural land; forestry land; specialized land and other land.

Based on the purpose of land use, the 1987 Land Law passed by the National Assembly on December 29, 1987 stipulates that land is divided into 5 types: agricultural land; forestry land; residential land; specialized land and unused land.

The 1993 Land Law was passed by the National Assembly on July 14, 1993. Article 11 stipulates that land is divided into 6 types: agricultural land; forestry land; rural residential land; urban land; specialized land and unused land. This classification is based on the main purpose of use and on the location.

Land use table, no legal separation causes difficulties for land management.

To overcome that limitation, the 2003 Land Law divided land into three groups: agricultural land, non-agricultural land and unused land; the classification based on the sole criterion of the main purpose of land use has helped create favorable conditions for land users to exercise their rights in the process of land use as well as for state agencies in the process of land management.

The concept of agricultural land has been expanded to the name "agricultural land group". The 2003 Land Law and the Decree guiding its implementation do not provide a specific concept but list the types of land belonging to the agricultural land group including: a) Land for growing annual crops including rice land, pasture land for livestock, land for growing other annual crops; b) Land for growing perennial crops (generally referred to as agricultural production land);

c) Production forest land; d) Protective forest land; e) Special-use forest land (collectively referred to as forestry land); e) Aquaculture land; g) Salt-making land; h) Other agricultural land, including: land in rural areas used to build greenhouses and other types of houses for the purpose of cultivation, including forms of cultivation not directly on the land; construction of barns for raising livestock, poultry and other animals permitted by law; construction of stations and experimental research farms for agriculture, forestry, salt-making and aquaculture; construction of nurseries for breeding seedlings and breeds; construction of warehouses and houses for households and individuals to store agricultural products, pesticides, fertilizers, machinery and agricultural production tools (Clause 1, Article 13 of the 2003 Land Law; Clause 4, Article 6 of Decree No. 181/2004/ND-CP dated October 29, 2004).

Thus, agricultural land can be understood as the sum of all types of land with similar usage characteristics, as the main means of production serving the purpose of agricultural and forestry production such as cultivation, animal husbandry, aquaculture, afforestation, forest protection and restoration, and agricultural and forestry research and experimentation.

1.2. Current status of agricultural land use in Vietnam

According to the 2010 Land Inventory Report [7], the total area of land types inventoried in 2010 nationwide was 33,095,351 ha (Table 1.1. Land structure area in 2010), including: agricultural land group: 26,197,449 ha, accounting for 79.16%; non-agricultural land group: 3,671,388 ha, accounting for 11.09%; unused land group:

3,226,514 hectares, accounting for 9.75%.

The total agricultural land area is 26,197,449 ha, accounting for 79.16% of the total land area (Table 1.2. Current status of agricultural land use in 2010), of which: agricultural production land: 10,118,085 ha, accounting for 30.57%; forestry land:

15,346,126 ha, accounting for 46.37%; aquaculture land: 690,221 ha, accounting for 2.09%; salt-making land: 17,562 ha, accounting for 0.05%; other agricultural land: 25,455 ha, accounting for 0.08%.

The total area of agricultural land in 2010 compared to 2005 increased by 1,374,890 ha (Table 1.3. Changes in agricultural land in the country), mainly in agricultural land (increased by 972,517 ha) and forestry land (increased by 668,717 ha); forest cover increased from 37.1% to 39.1%.

The proportion of agriculture in Vietnam accounts for a fairly high proportion of the total national income. However, the average agricultural land area per capita in Vietnam is quite low compared to the world. According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in 2004, the average agricultural land area in Vietnam was 0.17 ha/person; Thailand 0.61 ha/person; Cambodia 0.38 ha/person; Asia-Pacific countries 0.3 ha/person; developing countries 0.27 ha/person, developed countries such as Australia, Japan... 11.05 ha/person and the world average is 0.59 ha/person. After 5 years, Vietnam's cultivated land area decreased to 0.11 ha/person, belonging to the 7th group with an average land area of 0.1 - 0.2 ha/person (Table 1.4. Agricultural land area per capita in the world).

This is because Vietnam's population is growing quite rapidly, while the agricultural land area is decreasing sharply due to urbanization; land use planning in many localities has revealed limitations and unreasonableness, leading to the conversion of rice land use purposes becoming more and more common, especially in the provinces of the Northern Delta, the Mekong Delta and the Southeast. During the period of 2000 - 2007, the rice land area decreased by 361,935 hectares (an average decrease of nearly 51,075 hectares per year); of which, the Red River Delta decreased by 52,047 hectares, the Mekong Delta decreased by 205,705 hectares.

The situation of illegal land use conversion in the past 5 years in localities is very common; the situation of buying and selling, converting agricultural land into residential land in the suburbs of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City; buying and collecting agricultural land to wait for projects, leading to land abandonment on the outskirts of big cities is a risk.

threatens food security and the country's stable development in the coming decades.

Therefore, protecting agricultural land is an urgent issue today.

1.3. Overview of the development process of legal regulations on agricultural land in Vietnam

1.3.1. Law on agricultural land from the August Revolution in 1945 to the implementation of land reform in 1954

Before 1945, agricultural land was divided into two main types: communal land and private land. Rural areas were divided into two classes based on the nature of land ownership: landlords and tenants. The landlord class accounted for about 2% of the total population but owned over 50% of the total land area, while 50% of farming households were tenants without land and worked for the landlord class.

The August 1945 general uprising was victorious, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was born. In the difficult conditions of the country, our Party headed by President Ho Chi Minh determined that in order to protect the government and the achievements of the August Revolution, it was necessary to properly resolve the relationship between farmers and the revolution, and the most fundamental problem of farmers was the land issue. The urgent problem was that in order to bring land to the farmers, it was impossible not to carry out land reform. However, at that time, because we still had to deal with internal and external enemies to protect the young government, our State could not yet carry out land reform. In that situation, to prepare for land reform, the State issued a number of legal documents related to land policy such as:

Decree 78/SL dated July 14, 1949 of the Resistance Government stipulated rent reduction. This Decree stipulated a 25% reduction compared to the pre-August Revolution rent level, abolished all types of secondary rent, abolished the over-landing regime, and established a provincial rent reduction council to adjudicate disputes about rent reduction.

Decree 88/SL dated May 22, 1950 of the Government on tenancy and rent reduction regulations. The Decree was issued with the aim of ensuring the tenancy rights of tenant farmers and prohibiting landowners from unreasonably demanding back their land.

On March 5, 1952, the Government issued the Provisional Regulation on the Use of Public Land and Public Land. The Regulation was issued to guide and ensure the fair and equitable distribution of public land for the benefit of poor farmers.

In the documents of the 4th Central Party Conference in January 1953

[24] clearly stated: "Destroy the land ownership regime of French colonialists and other imperialist invaders in Vietnam, abolish the feudal land ownership regime of Vietnamese landlords and foreigners, and implement the land ownership regime of farmers".

At this time, our Party introduced the policy of implementing the "farmers' land ownership" regime, which was a new step in forming legal regulations on agricultural land in our country.

On December 4, 1953, the National Assembly voted to pass the Land Reform Law and on December 19, 1953, President Ho Chi Minh signed Decree 197/SL promulgating the Land Reform Law, marking an important step forward in the State's regulations on agricultural land in our country, implementing the slogan "land to the tiller". The Land Reform Law was promulgated with the purpose of nationalizing the land of Vietnamese and French landlords, abolishing the feudal colonial land regime and redistributing it to farmers with little or no land with the slogan "land to the tiller".

1.3.2. Law on agricultural land from the implementation of land reform to the birth of the 1980 Constitution

After the French colonialists withdrew from Vietnam, the South of our country was oppressed by the Saigon puppet government and the American imperialists who invaded South Vietnam; the two regions of the South and the North developed under the influence of two different political regimes, and were therefore subject to the regulation of two different legal systems. The laws on agricultural land of the two regions also had different provisions to suit the political regimes of each class and State.

In the North, after the Land Reform Law was promulgated, the implementation of the Law made many mistakes. However, in more than 2 years of implementing the Land Reform Law, 810,000 hectares of land were divided among 2,104,138 households, accounting for 72.87% of rural households at that time [29]. Eight agricultural incentive policies, including the land policy approved by the National Assembly in May 1955, created remarkable changes in production results and people's lives.

At the 8th session in April 1958, the National Assembly passed the 3-year socialist reform plan (1858 - 1960), bringing farmers into cooperatives, marking the period of collectivization in our country, consistently establishing a public ownership regime including collective ownership and state ownership, individual land ownership rights were gradually narrowed and almost abolished.

abolish. According to the provisions of the 1959 Constitution and a number of legal documents, the form of land ownership in the North of our country during this period included three forms of ownership, including: land owned by the entire people, collective ownership and land owned by private individuals.

By 1960, about 86% of farming households and 68% of total agricultural land had joined lower-level cooperatives. In these cooperatives, farmers still owned land and means of production. In higher-level cooperatives, farmers pooled land and other means of production into cooperatives under common management. From 1961 to 1975, about 20,000 higher-level cooperatives were established with the participation of about 80% of farming households [38].

After the South fell into the hands of the American invaders, the Ngo Dinh Diem government carried out "land reform". The essence of the land reform was to bribe the peasant class, the class that made up the vast majority of the population in the South at that time, to turn the South into a new type of American colony. By establishing the Tenant Farm Regulation, the Ngo Dinh Diem government legalized 750,000 hectares of land that the revolutionary government had divided among the peasants in the South.

On March 26, 1970, President Nguyen Van Thieu signed Decree No. 003/70 promulgating the Law on Tillers Owning Land. The Law on Tillers Owning Land was more progressive than the land reform under Ngo Dinh Diem. The Law on Tillers Owning Land stipulated land limits: landlords in the South were only allowed to leave 15 hectares of land, while landlords in the Central region were allowed to leave no more than 13 hectares; landlords were stripped of their land ownership rights, and the land was distributed to the peasants. But in reality, that land was bought back by the government; this was a very costly policy to win the hearts of the people under Nguyen Van Thieu.

After the country was reunified, the State continued to develop agriculture in the direction of collectivization. In the North, agricultural cooperatives expanded in scale from village-wide cooperatives to commune-wide cooperatives. In the South, farmers were still allowed to operate under the free market model until 1977-1978, after which they gradually followed collectivization.

In short, the history of national liberation revolution and the history of economic development of Vietnam are closely related to the issues of agricultural land use. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam has issued many policies to solve the land problem for farmers and implemented land reform to establish a land regime.

collective ownership in cooperatives; thereby protecting the ownership of land and means of production, which has the effect of encouraging and supporting the development of the cooperative economy. However, the implementation process still has many mistakes and shortcomings; especially after 1975, the Vietnamese economy in general and agriculture in particular had to bear the heavy consequences of the war and the consequences of policies during the period of centralized planning economy, the period of collective economy in agriculture posed the need to carry out comprehensive renovation.

1.3.3. Law on agricultural land from 1980 to present

The 1980 Constitution recognized for the first time that land is owned by the entire people, "The State manages it in a unified manner according to a general plan to ensure that land is used rationally and economically". It can be affirmed that this is the greatest revolution in land ownership in Vietnam to date. With the provisions of Article 19 of the Constitution, previously established forms of land ownership have been abolished, establishing a new form of land ownership - land owned by the entire people, with the State as the representative owner.

Clearly defining the position, role and importance of land for agricultural production in our country, Article 20 of the 1980 Constitution stipulates: "... Land reserved for agriculture and forestry may not be used for other purposes, without permission from a competent state agency".

Based on practical experience, on February 13, 1981, the Central Party Secretariat of the 5th tenure issued Directive No. 100/CT-TW on product contracting to labor groups and workers in agricultural cooperatives, also known as Contract 100. Under the Contract 100 policy, cooperatives allocated agricultural land to groups and workers. Production was still under the management of the cooperative, at the end of the season, farmers were paid income in rice based on production output and contributed working days. Although simple, Contract 100 became a breakthrough in the process of moving towards a market economy. The birth of Contract 100 had a significant impact on agricultural production, especially rice production increased by 6.3%/year during the period 1981 - 1985. However, after 1985, growth in agricultural production began to decline. In the South, a series of conflicts also increased in rural areas, especially land relations due to the "leveling" of land division and adjustment. This raised the need to carry out new reforms in land policy.

Protecting agricultural land under land law in Vietnam - 2

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