Vietnam

Achievements

Key indicators and performance for 2009-2010

Indicator: The first two projects of a new agricultural livelihoods program in the north-western highland provinces implemented

Performance: The project on improving market engagement for sustainable upland production systems has been implemented.

Researchers have varied the content of the project on increasing the safe production, promotion and utilisation of indigenous vegetables by women to align it with the new agricultural livelihoods program in the north-western highland provinces.

A third project on overcoming technical and market constraints to the emergence of profitable beef enterprises is in advanced stages of design, with implementation expected in the first half of 2010–11.

Indicator: Cost-effective and environmentally friendly aquaculture feeds introduced for a wider range of species, backed by economic analysis

Performance: Almost complete adoption has been achieved of formulated feeds by the catfish industry, resulting in greatly reduced use (many tens of thousands of tonnes) of low-value fish as a fish feed, releasing those low-value fish for human consumption. A major new project has been established to coordinate aquaculture nutrition research in Vietnam, especially in developing improved diets for marine finfish and crustaceans.

Indicator: Technologies developed for fast-growing forest plantations for high and sustainable productivity, particularly on degraded soils

Performance: A project that has established relationships between silvicultural management in eucalypt plantations and the problems related to growth stress that frequently arise when young eucalypts are used for the production of sawn timber is now complete.

Another project is well underway in which trials have been established in northern, central and southern Vietnam to examine impacts of silviculture on productivity and sustainability of acacia plantations. These results are now leading to silvicultural guidelines for the production of acacia sawlogs.

Indicator: Production and management practices developed for two indigenous vegetables and two temperate fruit species based on regional/market comparative advantage in northern Vietnam

Performance: Researchers have developed improved production and management practices for 10 indigenous vegetables, and better management and production of high-quality stone fruit and persimmons is realising benefits. The development of these practices has led to improved market competitiveness of high-value agricultural products from northern Vietnam.

Indicator: Management practices developed for sustainable and profitable farming systems best suited to local conditions in south-central coastal Vietnam

Performance: A multidisciplinary project involving integrated crop and beef cattle production and marketing is progressing well, leading to field investigations that will identify and develop management practices for sustainable and profitable crop and livestock systems for south-central coastal Vietnam.

Achievements from the 2009-10 Annual Report

The remarkable economic growth in Vietnam over the past 2 decades has led to significant structural changes in its economy. The agriculture sector now faces strong competition for its land and labour resources. There has been a loss of prime agricultural land to industrialisation, while farmers in the Mekong Delta have complained of rural labour scarcity. The agricultural sector also faces strong pressures on the marketing side, as strong growth in incomes has fuelled a rapid rise in the livestock sector. The recent global food crisis has raised concerns about domestic food prices and related agricultural policy. With its recent accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the effects of the global market are likely to have a stronger influence on other parts of the Vietnamese economy, fuelling stronger growth in non-agriculture sectors and creating additional structural adjustment pressure in agriculture.

ACIAR is supporting a project designed to develop capacity in the partner institution for quantitative analysis of structural adjustment issues, and to provide policy advice on these issues. The project has developed a medium-term model to assess a range of domestic issues including the outlook for different agricultural industries, the impact of land loss on agricultural output, the influence of productivity growth on medium-term production and food prices, and demand for rural labour at the regional level. During 2009–10 the project continued to focus on training and developing the medium-term projection model. Most of the effort was focused on developing a baseline dataset that represents the farming systems in each of the eight agroecological regions, and depicts the characteristics of small-scale, semi-intensive and intensive livestock production systems.

There is growing interest in Vietnam in the new non-astringent persimmon varieties ‘Fuyu’ and ‘Jiro’ as an alternative to the traditional astringent varieties. A project is enhancing the productivity, yield and fruit quality aspects of persimmon in Vietnam by changing to the new non-astringent varieties using appropriate farmer development practices based on low-level technologies, best orchard management practices and new handling systems. The project is establishing demonstration orchards to instruct the ethnic minority farmers in northern Vietnam, ensuring that new technologies for growing persimmons reach as many farmer groups as possible. The nursery at Phuong Huyen Plant Variety Company in Hoa Binh province of northern Vietnam has over 1,000 trees of 21 persimmon rootstock types collected from northern and southern areas of the country. Over 700 of the rootstock trees have been grafted to ‘Fuyu’ and ‘Jiro’ for planting in trials and demonstration blocks. There has also been development of integrated pest and disease management and good agricultural practices. As well, efforts are underway to determine the best method to remove astringency from the traditional Vietnamese varieties.

There is increasingdemand for indigenous vegetables in Vietnam, and women play a significant role in their production. A project is helping to lift farm income in rural areas by increasing the skills of women in the safe production, promotion and utilisation of indigenous vegetables. In mid 2009 the project was redesigned, reshaping it as a ‘research for development’ project. Later in the year, at a revitalisation workshop, the results of a scoping study were presented. Six vegetables were selected and agreed upon as the project focus. In the past 6 months project activities have sought to develop best-bet management practices and a more in-depth market analysis for the six selected vegetables.

Another project aims to increase smallholder engagement in competitive value chains associated with farming systems based around maize and temperate fruit, while also improving land and crop management practices for the development of sustainable and profitable farming systems. It involves the smallholder farmers in the north-western highlands of Vietnam who have recently acquired market access and are in transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture. The project was launched in May 2009 with an inception workshop, which aimed at socialising the project design to all project partners; building capacity for participatory, inter-institutional collaborative research; establishing field study teams and work plans; and formulating criteria and guidelines for project site selection. It involved a range of institutes and individuals from varying disciplinary backgrounds, the first such arrangement in Vietnam.

Past ACIAR projects have focused on nutrition of important aquaculture species. A new project is building on this research to study issues related to diet development and low-value fish replacement, and bring together a collective of important aquaculture sectors in Vietnam. The key subjects for study are finfish (barramundi / Asian sea bass, grouper and cobia), mud crabs and spiny lobster. The project is providing advice and training on feed formulation and processing in a series of workshops to be held in Vietnam in 2010 and 2011. Other activities include socioeconomic surveys of farmers of marine fish, mud crab and spiny lobster to understand the real and perceived limitations to the adoption of pelleted feeds, and a feed mill survey to characterise the feed production industry and raw material options available locally in Vietnam.

Despite having many native clams, mussels and oysters with excellent production potential along approximately 3,000 km of coastline, Vietnam trails its neighbours in bivalve production. China, for instance, produces over 90% of its 11-million-t harvest of bivalves from aquaculture. A project is assisting the development of bivalve hatchery production in Vietnam and Australia. So far, scientific and commercial interest in the expansion of bivalve culture has led to rapid initial progress in developing hatchery skills and capacity. The hatchery at the National Marine Broodstock Centre at Cat Ba is now complete and the installation and operation of advanced culture systems to ensure the optimal use of the new facility now well established. Production of commercial-scale quantities of juvenile clams and oysters is now well into its second year. Pacific oysters occupy 100 ha of Halong Bay and further areas of 400 ha and above are earmarked for expansion.

The plantation industry in Vietnam continues to expand and thrive, with fast-growing hybrid acacias being produced in a rotation of around 7 years. Ongoing research is focusing on maintenance of soil fertility from one rotation to the next. At present much of the acacia wood is destined for the paper industry, but ACIAR work is focusing on producing veneers from acacias, which bring a much better price than wood pulp.

In Vietnam demand for pork is increasing rapidly. Successful commercial smallholder pig farming may help to meet demand while serving as a vehicle for alleviating some of the country’s widespread rural poverty. An ACIAR project is focusing on giving smallholder pig producers better access to higher value market chains and thus helping them to raise their incomes. Key research results suggest that small, household-based pig producers are competitive and able to generate income from pig production as long as they can exploit areas where they have cost advantages, such as in home-grown or own-produced feeds. For the next few decades smallholder pig rearing will continue to play an important role in pork supply, poverty reduction and household employment generation, especially for women.

Since the 1980s the plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) have been known to promote the nutrient-efficient growth of cereal crops. Preliminary research funded by ACIAR and AusAID verified in field trials near Hanoi that the PGPR effect can reliably increase the average yield of rice by 10–20%. A biofertiliser product, now registered as BioGro, has been developed and a project has sought to understand the function of the biofertiliser, while at the same time promoting its wider adoption in Vietnam and possible commercialisation. In the past year farmer trial sites have been set up at two locations in the Mekong Delta. Positive data on benefits from BioGro are now available for two crops at each site and a third crop was due to be harvested in June 2010, giving results for all three crops in the annual cycle. The first crop after the flood yields best, with the subsequent two crops declining in yield as acid sulfate conditions develop and nutrients deposited by the flood are depleted. These trials have shown that early timing of application of a moderate rate of urea-nitrogen is correlated with the greatest response from BioGro. However, because high residual soil nitrogen (soil-N) is deleterious to beneficial effects from BioGro, the soil-N must be optimised.

On the coastal provinces of central Vietnam agricultural development is hampered by lack of water combined with sandy soils that are infertile and difficult to irrigate. A promising approach to improve agricultural development in this region is expansion of cashew nut production using small-scale farm dams to capture wet season run-off and irrigation technologies that are economically and socially appropriate. There is also potential to improve soil fertility and integrate nut production with forage production using groundcover species such as Arachis pintoi. A project aims to improve smallholders’ incomes by improving the profitability of cashew nut production. Over the past two cropping seasons a prolonged wet season followed by two typhoons affected cashew field experiments. This year unseasonably hot conditions at flowering resulted in nut-set failure across Ninh Thuan and surrounding coastal provinces, and yields recorded from field trials were well down on previous seasons. The situation is of concern as many cashew farmers will receive little or no income from their orchards this year. Binh Dinh province did not experience the same climatic extremes, and cashew yields here indicate benefits from following guideline fertiliser inputs and scheduling irrigation using mini-evaporation pans.

Research is under development to study climate change in the Mekong region. Issues include seawater intrusion and flooding, both of which are likely to worsen under climate change. The aim is to prepare the rice-based system for change, developing salt-tolerant varieties that will survive under submergence.