Conservation Agriculture in Vietnam Presented by Duong Ngoc Thi, Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development

Contains Vietnam agriculture context Status of Conservation Agriculture (CA) Opportunities and Challenges to CA Strategy and Policy Suggestion

1. Context After 25 years reforming, Vietnam agriculture has achieved many success: Food security; Agro-products export; Poverty alleviation; Rural development etc. Agriculture share 20% of total GDP, and 25% of export value.

Major exported commodities in 2012 Rice (3.73 bil. $) Tea (227 mil. $) Coffee (3.74 bil. $) Cashewnut (1.48 bil. $) Rubber (2.856 bil. $) Pepper (802 mil. $) Wood snd furnitures (5 bil. $ ) Rau qu ả (805 triệu $ Aquaculture (6.15 bil. $ ) Casava (1.35 bil. $)

Rice growing areas and productivity

Rice export in amount and value

Directions to develop agriculture until 2020 Ensure food security at national level and household level; Develop commodities have high advantage to attain high value, increase agro-product competitiveness; Apply technical and technology solutions in agro production and business, applying intensification and mechanizations; Apply farming systems to adopt and mitigate to Climate Change (CC), using sustainable resources; Develop both small scale and large models Change institutions to cooperate among farmers and link enterprises to farmers, attract investment from private sector.

Directions on techniques −Replacing crop varieties tolerant to flood, drought, diseases and short maturity −Rotating rice with annual crops in area specializing rice cultivation −Changing relation of crop, livestock and aquaculture in farming system. −Applying technical measure to reduce fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide application; −Applying technical measure to reduce water use; reduce glasshouse emission

Practical changing from rice to other crops

2. Conservation Agriculture applied Seasons: Winter season in North Winter –Spring or Spring –Summer in the South Other seasons in Mountainous area Crops: Maize Soybean Potato Other crops, Rice - Shrimp

Maize and Soybean grown by minimum tillage

Potato and pumpkin grown by minimum tillage Potato

CA farming system Rice - Shrimp

Process applying CA on the Field (rice –growing land) Harvesting rice Cleaning the field. Cutting straw Maintaining soil humid Dig network of furrow drain around the field and between beds To create beds Sowing seeds or growing seedling on the beds Covering ground by straw Take care the young seedling and fields

Process growing maize by minimum tillage these system had minimized expense on tillage

Benefit of CA CA have been evaluated highly by farmers and local administrations on aspects: On economics: −Minimize expense for tillage (60-70%) −Use waste products (using 90% straw), economize fertilizer cost −No need of strong farmers, the older can work easily −Farmers can grow larger area. −Grow crops have been carried in time −Farmer’s expense is reduced, income are increased On environment: Using straw, reducing pollution of fresh air due to burning straw Minimum or zero tillage has contributed to reduce glasshouse emission Reducing chemical fertilizer => reducing chemical surplus in to soil, water and products to contribute to protect environment and ensure food safety.

CA Overview CA have been implemented by farmers at small scale Although Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) recognize CA on Potato as an advanced technique, but in fact local administrations don’t pay more attention to guide farmers; CA on other crops (except Potato) has not been recognized yet; Database and information on CA system are in shortage Farmers income from CA system is low and limited The awareness on CA has not been disseminated widespread

3. Opportunities and Challenges 3.1. Opportunities  Government set a target to reduce 20% GHE in each decade, so they pay more attention to apply GHE - reduced agriculture system;  Government set a target program to use sustainable resources;  CA on potato production had been recognized by MARD as an advanced technique and encourage farmer to apply  Price of material chemical and industrial input increased, some farmer try to use at least of industrial inputs and towards their own sources;  Consumers and others stakeholders pay more attention on food safety, so that they support the CA systems

3. Opportunities and Challenges 3.2. Challenges  No agency of Agriculture sector has been assigned responsibility on CA;  Awareness of Producers and administrators on CA is limited;  Farmers have been implemented by their experience, the training skills on CA has been little  Database and information on CA is in shortage  CA systems have dramatically been competed with another systems (intensive systems, etc.)  No detail policy to support CA while many policies have been support others program and systems;  The price of products from CA system has not been higher than ones producing by other systems

4. Suggestions 4.1. Strategy suggestions (1) CA should be developed on rice field rotated with annual crops, coastal areas and sloping land (2) It can be applied minimum tillage with annual crops and zero tillage with CA system rice – shrimp or fish (3) It is not only small households but large production scale can applied CA systems. (4) It should combine applying CA system with organic products or products safety (5) It should be planned and maintain CA system with other program

4.2. Policy Suggestions (1) It should assign the agency (or division in existed administration) to study and develop CA systems (2) Agriculture sector evaluate and recognize CA systems as advanced techniques (3) It should be evaluate benefit on environment comprehensively (4) Policy advocacy to Government in order to issue policy to support and disseminate CA systems (5) illustrate and persuade the consumers accepting to pay higher price of products producing from CA systems

Thank you for attention.