Việt Nam is primarily an agricultural country, and the principle product is rice. Seldom does a meal go by without cơm. Rice is the basic staple of the Vietnamese diet. One of the favorite meats is duck. It is as common to see duck on the menu as chicken. The Mystery Guest Blogger even did a story about ducks going home for dinner.
In our area of Central Việt Nam, there are two harvests of rice per year. After the rice is harvested, there are still grains of rice left in the field that escaped picking.
This is where the ducks come in. Duck farmers send their flocks into the harvested paddies to glean the remaining kernels of rice. The rice farmer gets his field prepared for the next planting by ridding the field of old grain and by a little fertilization from the ducks’ droppings. The duck farmer fattens up his birds for market. It’s a good deal all around. Nobody gets paid – its just a great symbiotic relationship.
I have no idea why the ducks don’t fly away. Maybe they just know they have a good life with lots of rice. Maybe their wings are clipped, but I doubt that merely because there are so many ducks. One Vietnamese tells me that this breed of domesticated ducks cannot fly further than 10 meters or so. (About 30 feet.) Nonetheless, the duck farmer has no trouble herding them from one paddy to another using his long bamboo pole. He motioned for me to move a little way down the road, then he deftly herded them right by me as they crossed to road to another field. Too bad I couldn’t capture the noise of a couple hundred ducks quacking away as they waddled past.
On a more somber note, I am sure somebody reading this is beginning to worry about us catching avian flu. I know it is major topic in the western press now, but the pandemic (if it occurs) will come when avian flu is transmitted directly from humans to humans. At present, you can only catch the flu directly from ducks or chickens. If I immerse my hands in duck doo doo, or if I drink some raw duck blood, I might have a chance of getting bird flu. But, I was yards away from the birds. At present, I am in no more danger of contracting bird flu than any of you in the west.