Vietnam’s northern Hai Hau district, a patchwork of lush paddy fields and tidy villages, is famed for growing high-quality aromatic rice, historically gifted to kings and the court and still prized by Hanoi diners today.

But Tran Thi Hanh, a 48-year-old farmer, is fed up with toiling on her quarter-hectare of Hai Hau paddy land, even if global rice prices are soaring. “I don’t want to work on the rice field any more,” she declares. “It’s not very profitable and it’s very hard work.”