DELTA DU MÉKONG _ Le Poumon Vert du VIETNAM 🌾 ⎮Documentaire civilisation - AMP

Once upon a time, we realized that life and death are not the same. But the moment we were together was like a dream. Every day when we were in love, we swore to each other. But today, we don't say a word. The parting road has come. The dusk has gone. We are here together, behind the parting road. I love singing about my country. I grew up here, in the Mekong Delta. In this region, nature is generous and welcoming. When I was a child, I used to sail on these green canoes. Later, I discovered orchard gardens, worked in rice fields, and started a family. My village lives to the rhythm of the Mekong and the sea. The water rises and falls. We have learned to feed ourselves to its rhythm. Everyone fishes, collects, harvests and cultivates. My family, my friends, the animals around me, all find here a formidable life force. We are the children of the delta. The parting road has come. The moment we were together was like a dream. Every day when we were in love, we swore to each other. But today, we don't say a word. Water, life, comes through the Mekong. It takes its source in Tibet, runs through China on 4,500 km, slides between Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, and floods Cambodia to finally come and bathe my country, Vietnam. Before throwing its muddy waters into the sea of China, the river, enriched by its long descent, divides itself and comes to die by opening its nine arms. It is Song Khulong, the river of the nine dragons. It forms a cradle of nature, of unique richness. Its wetlands, fertile lands, its fishing waters, its wild expanses, where man has worked, constitute a labyrinth of 5,000 km of rivers and canals. To better understand the links that unite us to the delta, you have to go into it to meet its inhabitants. Tran Van Bay knows this vegetal meadow well. He lives as a nomad with his wife and son on their boat house. He is a peasant fisherman. Six months of the year, during the Ozo period, from December to May, he lives on his motorized, furnished yacht. The tides enter the delta twice a day, bringing fish. Every morning, Tran Van Bay ties his nets during the rising of the tides, around the floating houses of a fish farm. Nature brings back the fish from upstream, which descend with the current, and the high tide brings from downstream the fish from the sea of China. And it is thanks to all this natural wealth that we can feed ourselves. And it is also thanks to them that we can do business and earn enough money for the expenses of the family. Thus, we have a happy life. The Mekong is very important for us fishermen, as the land is for the farmers. As we have no fields, this river is a source of life for us. Every day, the river is generous, and Minh chooses his wife to sell the fish. With a little luck, she will not have to travel several kilometers to sell her goods. The minimum wage of this working day, 50,000 to 75,000 dong, or 2 or 3 euros, will allow the family to feed themselves and put some money aside. While she does the door-to-door, her husband prepares the meal. It is always like this. The rest of the year, in dry season, the fish are less abundant, and the small family then lives away from the river, the father working in his rice field, and the mother taking care of the vegetable garden. At my home in Longan, we don't have a lot of land for agriculture. The rice culture brings us daily food for the family, and this job allows us to earn a little money for the various expenses of our life. It's hard because you have to travel a lot. My house is in Longan. I have to go from Longan to Thien Giang. I can't go home often, only every two weeks or every ten days, because it's too far. And when you go to work in a place, you have to stay there as long as you can. It's a life in harmony with the Mekong, a difficult and risky life, rhythmed by the river, its tides, its bad weather, and its river traffic. Like all the farmers in the delta, Nguyen Thi Bay has been shaped by the waters of the Mekong. It owes them a lot. This is where they gather food to sell every day. The stems of these nenuphars will be used to make the soup. Thi Bay may be able to make 25,000 dongs, almost one euro, on the village market. It's a traditional market, where every morning the villagers come to buy food. It's especially the territory reserved for women. You can find everything that can be grown, fished, and picked. A real natural concentration that gives work and feeds the population. I come to the market every day to sell products. When it rains, the street is very slippery, but I still have to go there to make some money, to buy rice to eat. I put a basket of vegetables on my head, I keep another on my hip, and I go to the market to sell. My husband and I only live on that. Despite her age of 77, she comes here every day, 5 km from her home, to sell flowers, vegetables, and aromatic plants. A vital job that brings her a minimum of income. Guyen Thi Bay is a child of the delta. She survived the war in Indochina and the invasion of the Americans by hiding in the rice fields. Here, in the heart of the delta, she owns a farm bordered by the waters of the river, where she cultivates with care and love everything that nature, generous here, can give her. She acquired her domain, plot after plot, and provides work to the whole family. Thi Bay gave birth to 7 children, and now has a grandmother of 15 grandchildren. They will not be illiterate like her, because they have the chance to go to school. As usual, since 57 years of marriage, Thi Bay prepares the meal. The menu is often the same, rice, vegetables, and sometimes fish, when she has sold enough at the market to provide for herself. Life here marks the faces, hands, and bodies. A simple life, dependent on nature. Thi Bay will tell you that nature is poor here, and yet it has allowed her to live through the years, to feed herself and her family. Since marriage, their living conditions have not changed, and it is thanks to the help and family solidarity that the elders still manage to resist poverty. Thi Hoang pays homage to his ancestors, who, after working all their lives in the rice fields, deserved to rest in peace. There are signs that are not wrong. It is Sunday, and the families are full in their homes. No work today. After a hard week, everyone rests. As usual, Thi Hoang raises the flag, his way of showing his attachment to his country. He works hard in the rice fields, and his wife runs a small grocery store in the house. Several generations live under the same roof. It is the custom here, and above all a way to accompany the young people in life, and to teach them the trade. On this holy day, the village lives in slow motion. Here, the rice fields are deserted. But the harvest is short-lived, and the gold rush will soon resume. White gold hidden in a screen of greenery. All the wealth of our country. The rice fields, the land and the mixed water. Here, no machines or machines. The culture is hardly mechanized. It is in the deep mud that women sow, plant, clear, tear, dig and harvest. The delta represents 12% of the total surface of Vietnam, but ensures almost all of the country's food production every year, which has thus become the second largest exporter of rice in the world. I have been working with Bui Thinh Oi for more than 16 years. According to her, without the delta rice fields, the north of the country would not be able to eat. True or false, in any case here, the inhabitants are proud of it. Here, when we have no land, we have to work as employees for others. We can't make a lot of money because we can only sell manual labor. While people who have land, they have rice for each harvest, so they have an easier life. Even if rice does not make everyone's fortune, rice is everywhere. It feeds and gives work. It is the pillar of the local economy. The Mekong Delta is one of the most fertile rice fields in Asia. Economic outflows, the improvement of rice seeds, technological innovations now allow this region to produce up to three crops per year, depending on the land and irrigation, while it only produced two before. This increase in productivity is accompanied by a considerable increase in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Excessive use of these treatments leads to unnecessary expenses and exposes the population and the environment to high concentrations of harmful agrochemicals. At the Canto Biodiversity Research Center, Duong Van Nhi works with her team on the development of a new, reasoned and biological agriculture that must take into account the operation of the delta. The Mekong Delta has two seasons. A rainy season that lasts six months and a dry season that lasts six months as well. In the six months of the rainy season, we have about two months of flooding because of the water from the Mekong. People have to wait for the water to come down in order to cultivate. The agriculture of the Mekong Delta depends a lot on water. The rice needs water. Everything needs water. But since the delta is very flat, the water leaves very quickly during the dry season because there is nothing to eat. If there is nothing to eat, agriculture is threatened. As you can see, water is essential for the development of this region where 83% of the land is cultivated. The movements of this water do not affect the quality of the soil. This layer of land is the surface layer used by agriculture. The problem with this land is that during the rainy season, the water goes up to here and during the dry season, the water goes down to here. And when the water goes down to here, oxygen goes down with it and oxidizes the material below. Then it rises up by capillarity and evaporates, which makes this part of the land very acidic on the surface. This process is accentuated by the over-exploitation of the soil. Working on this type of land using chemical fertilizers is to increasingly impoverish the soil of the delta. Duong Van Nhi is currently developing a more productive variety of rice, requiring less water and is more resistant, which has the ability to naturally replace the blackened roots by the acidity of the soil. On this experimental farm, different methods are being studied for a sustainable development of agriculture, such as the recovery of cattle excrement to produce natural fertilizer or biogas by the fermentation of a mixture of plants and excrement from a pigsty. Will the preservation of the environment and the future of agriculture in Vietnam go through these biological techniques? Professor Duong Van Nhi believes so. But he also knows that a radical restructuring of agriculture is necessary to redefine the areas and actors that more or less need water. I continue my journey in this green maze. A scent of mud, of ripe fruits, of sun, of undergrowth fills the air I breathe. Block by block, from one side to the other, the floating mass of the adjacent water drifts. Since the beginning of the last century, pushed so far by a typhoon, they have colonized the area and hold the banks, which they suffocate and fix at the same time. With these stems, Wanga will make baskets. Dried in the sun, they become very resistant links. The delta is not just a giant rice field. It is also a luxurious garden overflowing with pineapples, coconuts, longans, mangos, and all kinds of fruits. This group of pickers plays with the baskets to pick the highest fruits. People from all over the world live in nature. In this period, several dozen tons of mangos come out of the village. The load will then be checked and transported by canoes to the capital of the delta, Kanto. Kanto, a city where youth explodes, and commerce too. The city is a perpetual construction site. Infrastructure is renewed on the banks of the canoes, asphalt is used, and the roads are cemented. The old wooden bridges are replaced by metal fences. The links with Ho Chi Minh City are reinforced. Artisanal or semi-industrial areas grow like mushrooms. In short, day by day, the city changes face. At 6 a.m., boats travel in all directions. A large part of the grain produced in the delta transits here. Everywhere, cabbages, pineapples, watermelons, oranges, and other fruits and vegetables are transported, exchanged, and sold. Cab on the Sampan aux Oranges, with Nguyen Thi Nam and his wife. Since 4 a.m. this morning, the operation has consisted of door-to-door, or more precisely, pontoon-to-pontoon, to flow its orange load. In this abundance, we better understand the nutritional role of the delta. According to the report of the Vietnamese Ministry, the country recorded this year an economic growth of 8%, and should maintain this rate at least until 2010. This development has reduced the poverty rate from 58% in 1993 to 18% in 2006. One of the current challenges is to improve the efficiency of the economy, notably by reorganizing public enterprises, especially after Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization. Life is not the same, but the moments together are like a dream. Every day when we love each other, we vow to each other but today we don't say a word. The parting road has come, the sunset is far away. Let's walk together after the long journey. There is no love left, but our heart beats together. The wish of the heart is not in vain. One day we will realize that life is not the same, but the moments together are like a dream. Every day when we love each other, we vow to each other but today we don't say a word. This immense delta plain, more than 20 times that of the Rhône, is a fertile land for humans, but also for animals. Today, only 7% of the delta is protected wild areas, consisting of mangroves on the coast, forests of Maléloca, as well as flooded meadows. This heritage is reduced, but plays an important role in the preservation of natural environments and wild species. These wet and fishy areas form a harbor, which has been degrading day by day since my childhood. Wild areas have become more and more rare. The considerable part taken by agriculture, in particular rice farming, has changed the landscape by making the delta an immense wet but artificial area. The disappearance of tropical forests and the development of human activities are not without consequence on the biodiversity of the delta. For several years, a new form of agriculture has emerged, but it accentuates the transformation of the landscape. This province has become, in a few years, the Vietnamese champion of osmotic shrimp farming. At regular intervals, from one place to another, flooded areas and forests have given way to breeding pools. In shrimp, for about ten years, Dat has left his job in the rice fields to make a better living. Several times a day, he comes to pick up some giant tiger shrimp to check their colour. His biggest fear is that the breeding will be infected by a virus. Day and night, he feeds his pensioners, treats the waters, and monitors his breeding pools against predators that could steal a few kilos of shrimp or contaminate his pool, infest the shrimp and jeopardize its production. In the only province of Sok Trang, 51,000 hectares of pools provide significant production and every day, they are dug up and redeveloped. Thuy is a craft farmer. She left the rice culture for the shrimp. By superstition and also by habit, Thuy comes every day to burn incense to provide protection to her family and protect her breeding. With two fish per year, she and her husband make a profit of 50 million dong, 2,000 euros, 14 times more than the low wages. The country needs this production, not for the indigenous people because it is too expensive, but for export, especially to the United States. Hoa is a vigilant breeder. He also monitors his pensioners closely. The shrimp has the bad habit of being sensitive to viruses, and he knows it well. The symptom is clear, the animal is yellow, and in this case, there is nothing to try. Several months of breeding would then go to waste, and Hoa would have to dry the basin to decontaminate it. Before, with 100 million dong for sale, we could make 50 million profit. But now, we only make 30 million dong, because the price of shrimp is falling more and more, while the price of food and oil is increasing. The risk in shrimp breeding is more important than in rice cultivation. Rice costs days of work, effort, but not really capital. Whereas with shrimp, if it dies after 1, 2 or 3 months, we can lose a few tens of millions of dong. But shrimp breeding is random. We don't always win, even if we master the technique well. Sometimes, we follow the treatments well, but if the soil is not adapted, the shrimp do not grow fast. Apart from that, there is no real difficulty in the transition from rice cultivation to shrimp breeding. In the salty areas, we are allowed to do shrimp breeding. The unsalted areas are reserved for rice farming. Our area is very salty, because the water comes directly from the sea. The Hang family lives here, with a view over the basin. The meals are similar every day, and the breeding, which requires a constant presence, only allows very little distraction. Here, peaceful life hides a deep evil. In this area, the operation of the delta has been completely transformed. The men, blinded by this activity, bringing 4 to 5 times more than the rice, have modified the hydraulic network. Initially built to protect the delta from seawater and to keep fresh water after the rainy season, especially for rice farming, it has been overturned, and even destroyed. As a result, due to inefficient drainage, the fields dry up, the environment deteriorates, and over time, the water becomes too salty for aquaculture. Here too, we have dug basins, as in many places in the delta. 50 tons of fish are caught at lunchtime. For decades, in these ponds, we have managed to acclimate wild breeders to manage to capture two varieties of catfish, the catra and the cabasa. Today, hundreds of thousands of tons of fish are exported. Aquaculture has spread throughout the delta. We also try to domesticate the gourami, a salmonidae close to the catfish. Nature feeds its inhabitants everywhere. Over there, there are fishermen, here, there are lumberjacks who carry their trunks of Maléloca trunks. The wood will be sold for export, transformed into coal or copper. The exploitation of the forests, whose surface has substantially receded over the last 20 years, generates appreciable benefits, which leads to a harmful over-exploitation. For now, these trees come from a plantation whose exploitation will have no impact on the environment. But everywhere in the country, agricultural lands are growing and require deforestation. On the outskirts of the canal, the Duong family is at work. Around a bunch of branches arranged for many weeks at the bottom of the river, a net is deployed with the utmost attention. The principle is simple. The branches used as fish shelters will be removed little by little. All that remains is to tighten the net to retrieve the bait. The tedious work of retrieving the branches has begun. Ga envisages a catch of 10 to 15 kilos. We buy these branches from people who make wood. They only use tree trunks. We then transport them by boat to here and put them in the water. They have been here since last year. Then we remove them to catch the fish. It's the only technique to fish here. The first fish will be used for lunch. In the whole delta, we gather fish, the first source of animal protein for the 18 million inhabitants. Each person would consume around 20 kilos per year, including perch and catfish, which the Vietnamese are very fond of. On the river, these canals, fishing is carried out in all its forms and by almost all the inhabitants. The delta is a giant basin, but the wealth of the Mekong is so inexhaustible, not so sure. The lower Mekong is home to 600 species of fish, and they must be kept at all costs. All these fish are not subject to any regulation, neither on the size of the nets nor on the width of the mesh. The juveniles are taken and reproduction is often compromised. In the delta, nothing happens without the river. Agricultural work, fishing, transport, pleasure, traditions, everything depends on the Mekong. Today, Tam Tam and Thuy Giang are going to say yes. They are getting married. When a woman gets married, it is said that she crosses the river, that she changes banks. For Tam and Thuy, as for all, the water of the delta governs life and the river accompanies them. The water of the sky joins the Mekong. The first showers announce the fog, and they are getting married. Maybe a happy marriage. Tam Tam will now leave her parents' house to settle in her husband's family. She will have to do the housework and prepare the meals. It is the custom. For her, a new life begins. From now on, the showers will be more and more frequent. The banks will gradually turn into vast streams of water that will be used for farming. The inhabitants here are used to these changes, and everyone resumes their activities after the rain. According to the belief, the eyes painted on the bow of the boat will allow you to see the troubled waters of the river and to sail in complete safety. But they will especially salute this arm away from the Mekong river, which pours its chocolate-colored waters into the mangrove. Here, the waters start to blur. They drain, disappear and reappear. It is the same music every day, and the crabs know it well. It is the ultimate step for the troubled waters of the Mekong. They have fulfilled their mission, and after travelling thousands of kilometers, they drop their food on the muddy coast, feeding the sea of China. It is time for low tide and time for mining. She and her daughter have cycled 5 km to catch the small shells and molluscs embedded in the vase A fishing morning will bring her just the equivalent of 1 euro. This is my job. I collect everything I find. When the water is low, I collect shells to have some money to buy rice to feed my children. There are days when there are a lot of shells and I can earn 40 to 50 thousand dong in one day. But if the water is not low, I can't work, so I don't earn anything. Here too, on the coast, nature feeds its inhabitants. Each one has his own beach. Physically dry, with few words, Mr. Tong picks up the molluscs. This area is actually a farm. Associated within a cooperative, Tong sows and raises shells to then pick them up several weeks later to sell them to a wholesaler. He spends hours, days, his life gripping the sand and the vase to earn his living. Before, the people here were very miserable. As we were very poor, we borrowed money with the help of the state to create a cooperative. So we can come here to work and live together with some members of this cooperative. I am the guardian of this shell area so that people come to pick them up and then we sell them and share the profits to live. People like us, the shell pickers, as well as all the other members of the cooperative, can earn something. Indeed, every million dongs invested in the capital brings 250,000 dongs of profit. The environment here, to my knowledge, is better adapted to the raising of shellfish and bloodworms. But in general, they live closer to the river because they prefer to be in the mud. The time of their breeding is about the same as for the bloodworms. They last from 6 months to 1 year. The shellfish are sinking progressively announcing the high tide. It is time for Tong to regain his cabin on Piloti, a home he built with his own hands. It is a real tour de guerre that allows you to see it day and night on his fishing area. Exquisite cuisine and sufficient comfort to prepare a meal for half a dozen members. On the menu, we find vegetables, fish, shellfish and, again and again, rice. Solid food for those who have been working since sunrise. Under the bamboo blades, the sea of China comes to visit, like every day. Once again, nature imposes its rhythm. Men have learned to listen to it. The delta makes them live or maybe survive. But everyone finds his own way. How much longer? The generations follow each other but do not look alike. The delta changes too. Aquaculture is expanding. Agriculture is overdeveloped. But it still feeds the population and makes hundreds of millions of dollars go to export. Success is undeniable. But will it last? Because the setback is already here. Explosions of cities, development of human activities, overabundant fishing, pollution, soil salinization. Even if men are attached to their country and understand how the delta works, the march towards progress for future generations, is it compatible with the preservation of this fragile ecosystem? How can I not be sad when the time comes to let go of my hands? My heart aches when I see a person. When will we walk together? My dear, I am poor and my hands are white. I know my life is full of bitterness. What can I do to make you happy?