Land suitability evaluation for sustainable development planning major perennial industrial crops in the Central Highlands

Abstract

The Central Highlands is a major agricultural production region of Vietnam with essential agricultural products such as coffee, pepper, and rubber. However, the agricultural development of the region is currently facing many challenges from the massive development of these industrial crops. The cause is the decline of natural resources (land, water, forest) due to over-exploitation to expand production area and the increase in negative impacts of climate change on agricultural cultivation. Therefore, land suitability assessment to monitor, adjust and stabilize the specialized farming areas according to specific natural advantages and adapt to climate change is considered as a feasible approach to solve these problems. This study was carried out to identify suitable planting areas for essential industrial crops (coffee, pepper, rubber) in the Central Highlands. ALES-GIS integrated model with 13 criteria was used to assess the suitability of land for crops in terms of ecology and environment. The study results showed that the very suitable area (S1) and moderately suitable area (S2) of coffea robusta accounted for 23.7%, coffea arabica accounted for 4.4%, pepper accounted for 29.3%, rubber accounted for 18.5% of the whole region land area. The assessment results have contributed to providing a scientific basis for orienting land use to 2030 for sustainable development in the Central Highlands, in which the coffee area is 432,775.9 ha (369,357.6 ha for coffea robusta and 63,418.2 ha for coffea arabica), pepper cultivation is 80,589.5 ha, and rubber plantation is 247,621.0 ha.