Livestock CRP Vietnam 2019-2021 Site selection process

[The Livestock CRP can] focus on difficult regions with high poverty and ethnic minorities, showing how research can deliver impact in challenging area, but can also conduct active research in medium scale intensified livestock areas to address priority issues on market, feeds and forage, animal diseases, food safety, AMR and the environment. While poverty rates have reduced rapidly over the past decade at national level, there remain sizable pockets of poverty at regional level, particularly in North-West, Central Highlands and Mekong Delta regions. In these areas, livestock, particularly indigenous pigs and cattle, play an important livelihoods function and could raise household income if market access, productivity, and animal disease constraints are overcome. This suggests a need for a targeted, regional approach for livestockoriented research in Vietnam

Evolution of agricultural water management in rainfed crop-livestock systems of the Volta Basin

This study of the evolution of AWM in the Volta Basin yielded key recommendations for research-for-development interventions and new concepts for research on water management. When promoting AWM strategies, projects should carefully study the available information on factors triggering adoption, and play on these to ensure sustainable uptake of the technology. Local capacities and agendas should be better accounted for when promoting AWM strategies or low-cost irrigation technologies. Participatory management of the water infrastructure should be carefully planned through integration of maintenance costs in project budget, capacity building of actors towards assumption of more responsibility, and ways to deal with turnovers within management committees. Farmers’ capacity building is definitely a key asset for enlightened risk management and constant adaptation to new variable conditions. Future research and development projects should concentrate on how to leverage the factors limiting adoption and enhancing system productivity while maintaining healthy ecosystem services. There is a need for a system perspective, to improve water-crop-livestock interactions, to develop off-season cultivation options and market access, and to balance distribution of gender benefits. There is a need for a multi-scale, landscape perspective, to understand ecological landscape processes and trade-offs between ecosystem services derived from and affected by AWM strategies adoption across different scales. There is a need for an institutional perspective, to facilitate management of AWM structures and to raise awareness. Finally, there is a need for a long-term perspective, to foresee the best strategies for adaptation to climate change and manage risk in the variable environment of the Volta Basin

Greenhouse gas emissions from piggery and biogas digesters in the Red River Delta of Vietnam

High demand for pork consumption in Vietnam has led to a shift of pig production systems from smallholder to industrial-scale farms, particularly in the Red River Delta. This production intensification also produces massive manure and urine quantities, leading to water, air, and soil pollution. The use of biogas plants has been seen as efficient to achieve in the same time a decrease in pollution, and a provision of biogas resources and bio-organic fertilizers. However, increasing pig head density has been causing great pressure on biogas digesters, as their size is not big enough for treatments anymore. Inappropriate utilization and management of biogas digesters can not only cause losses from pig wastes, but also contributes to increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). This case study aims to identify the role and contributions of biogas digesters to better manage the sources of GHG emissions from pig wastes for different types of pig farms. Four provinces of the Red River Delta were selected to test the pig waste management efficiency of biogas digesters and measure GHG emissions from these systems. The findings show that CO2, CH4 and N2O emission rates from pig manure are at least twice as much what is allowed under the Vietnam national technical regulation on ambient air quality. However, the GHGs emission rate does not significantly differ between smallholder and industrial-scale farms in the four surveyed provinces. Sampling position (between inside piggeries and outside the outlet of biogas digesters) did not affect significantly GHG emissions rate. These results confirm that the pig waste management of biogas digesters for both smallholder and industrial-scale pig farms is not efficient and that efforts need to be invested to mitigate GHG emissions in pig production. Reducing pig density per piggery is highly recommended. The modification of biogas digester structure to separate solid pig manure and urine should also be considered. Otherwise, the application of other alternative aerobic or anaerobic digestion technologies should also be encouraged and promoted. Biogas digesters in pig production have a significant role to play in Vietnam government’s mitigation strategies, as well as from the perspective of biosafety and animal husbandry policies