Vietnam - Country Strategy

1. Overview
2. Country Strategy
3. Priorities
4. Key Program Managers
5. Current Projects
6. Concluded Projects
7. Achievements
8. Relevant Publications
9. Country News and Stories
10. Project Locations
11. Country Office
12. Country Portfolio
13. AusAid and Other Briefs
14. Fellowship Statistics

Country Strategy

ACIAR's Vietnam strategy emphasises technical and agribusiness research to enhance smallholder incomes from selected areas of high-value agriculture, aquaculture and forestry. Since late 2007, the agriculture programs have increasingly focused on the following two regions, where poverty has persisted and where Australian agricultural technical skills have an ability to assist in development:

• the south-central coast, with an emphasis on research to underpin profitable but sustainable crop cultivation and livestock production systems in challenging environments (poor, sandy soils under water-limiting conditions), and research on the development of sustainable mariculture systems for high-value species
• the north-western highlands, where opportunities exist for selected horticultural products (high-value temperate fruits, flowers and vegetables), high-value crops (maize), livestock and forestry products. Further research will focus on supply chains where smallholders have become recently connected with markets. Research impacts will emerge through better market integration, ensuring improved profitability with more sustainable agricultural management practices within farming systems, supported by collaborative research to stimulate long-term practice change.

ACIAR recognises the vulnerability of agriculture in the Mekong Basin to climate variability and change. A small program focusing on climate change adaptation and mitigation in rice systems in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam will also be developed. The emphasis of interventions at the farm scale complements catchment-level and whole-of-Mekong Basin programs on water and climate change supported by AusAID and other donors.

ACIAR's fisheries and forestry programs, while differing in regional focus, have a common emphasis on improving incomes for farmers and the processing industry by targeting higher value products and markets. The fisheries program focuses on aquaculture, emphasising nutrition and high-value species. The forestry program will have an increased emphasis on genetics, silviculture and processing technologies for higher value wood products.

Linkages to the programs of AusAID and other donors working in these regions, such as the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), are being developed, and there will be a particular focus on linking central research institutes with provincially based research and extension departments and mass organisations. Cross-cutting themes include: a particular emphasis on applying Australian expertise in crop protection and biosecurity to prevent product losses and improve quality; agricultural economic studies to back the application of technical research; and the development of targeted communications strategies appropriate to each ethnic group and other beneficiaries.