Category Archive Events

Author: Hoang Giang – Vietnam Agriculture

On February 15 in Hanoi, the Center for Agricultural Research and Ecological Studies (Vietnam Academy of Agriculture) in collaboration with De Montfort University – United Kingdom, Department of Science, Technology and Environment (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development), a number of units under the Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA) and the Institute of Sociology organized an international conference with the theme “Resilience of the agricultural supply network in Vietnam”.

Making the opening speech, Dr. Pham Van Hoi, Director of the Center for Agricultural Research and Ecological Studies (CARES), said: “Population growth, globalization, and urbanization have led to huge fragmentation in the global agricultural supply chain. Environmental degradation and associated consequences such as epidemics, natural disasters, and conflicts between countries have caused supply chains to be interrupted or broken. This means that, in face of environmental problems and related disasters, we will be able to witness the supply chains becoming more and more fragile. This is also an issue that De Montfort University research with great focus, looking for solutions to strengthen the sustainability of the agricultural supply chain in the local model in particular and on a global scale in general”.

Limitations for both traders and farmer households

Sponsored by the British Academy, the project “Agricultural trading network in Vietnam” is implemented by a research team including Dr. Luong Tuan Anh of De Montfort University, Dr. Ngo Trung Thanh of CARES, and experts from 2020 to the present date. The goal is to establish a database on the distribution system of agricultural products specifically vegetables in Hanoi, quantifying the adaptability of the agricultural product trading network, finding out the causes of the underdevelopment of the network, thereby proposing measures for the actors in the network.

The survey was conducted in three localities, including Van Hoi commune (Tam Duong district, Vinh Phuc province), Van Duc commune (Gia Lam district, Hanoi), and Coi Ha village, Pham Tran commune (Gia Loc district, Hai Duong).

The results of the analysis and evaluation show the diversity in the trading network in the three communes, however, the ability to recover the agricultural product trading network remains low. On average, each household has less than two traders coming to conduct trades (1.7 traders/farmer household). A majority of households have limited ability to negotiate prices because there are not many channels to sell to traders. This leads to many risks in case traders cannot connect with households or do not purchase, making farmers unable to sell goods, directly affecting production and income.

Regarding some obstacles when expanding the distribution system, research shows that it takes traders a long time to work with farmers, while farmers tend not to work with many traders, driving mainly due to aversion to risk. Most of the traders only work with less than ten households because the cost to expand the distribution network is considerably large, thus solutions are required in order to increase the interaction between farmer households and traders, in which digitization can be considered an effective option. Instead of traders having to visit each field for inspection, farmers can provide pictures of the production area and production process on an electronic system. Traders can observe and evaluate field quality on the platform.

“It is essential to help reduce people’s tendency to be afraid of risks, help them realize the importance of developing a network of agricultural products, thereby expanding their relationships with traders,” said Dr. Luong Tuan Anh.

More in-depth and longer-term research is needed

A representative of the Department of Science, Technology and Environment shared some ideas with the conference after listening to the research results. “In Vietnam, agricultural supply chains are generally shaped based on the main product. In a chain with too many products with different values, it will be difficult to visualize the stability of the chain during operation. Taking the example of the surveyed subjects, if we do not clearly divide the key agricultural product groups of each region, we will not be able to clearly see the impact of the product on the whole chain.

“Particularly in this case, there are many types of vegetables, and each type’s form and scale of cultivation possesses certain distinctions, so the effects of each group on farmer households are also very different. Because of the limited sample data, it is possible to divide the survey results into several main groups, from which the research results, risk assessment and policy recommendations will become clearer.”

According to Dr. Hoang Sy Thinh (Faculty of Accounting and Business Administration, VNUA), the research at present mainly refers to the purchasing system, production households and traders but still has its limitations as the project has yet to establish a clear framework. “The study gives data of 1.7 traders/farmers and regards this number as difficulty and limitation, but the question is what standard helps us to confirm that thesis.

There are some systems that don’t need a trader in reality. Farmers can join cooperatives or small chains, such as the self-sufficiency movement that helps reduce inventories, emissions in farming or information asymmetries. Vegetable farmers around Hanoi can join communities and supply directly to apartments. Therefore, it is deemed necessary to establish a specific framework to determine the research direction in accordance with marketing resilience, market resilience or distribution chain resilience, then the research’s future implementation will be clearer”.

The link of the article can be found here

Food insecurity can lead to malnutrition, hunger, and various health problems, particularly among vulnerable groups such as children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, the elderly, and those living in poverty. Moreover, food insecurity can contribute to social unrest, conflict, and migration as well as environmental degradation and climate change. Therefore, ensuring food security is crucial for promoting global health, reducing poverty and inequality, and achieving a more sustainable and equitable future for all.

In 2021, researchers from De Montfort University received a financial grant from the British Academy to investigate network resilience in Vietnam. With the collaboration of researchers from the Vietnam National University of Agriculture, they conducted a survey among small farming households in the 3 villages Van Duc, Van Hoi and Pham Tran to understand the vegetable supply chain in rural areas in Vietnam and assessed whether such a network could be resilient under significant changes.  

The project received the interest and backing of Vietnamese policy makes, especially from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). In a workshop held last February in the Vietnam National University of Agriculture, Dr. The Anh Bui, a senior officer of the Science, Technology, and Environment Department from MARD praised the efforts of the research team in addressing one of the main problems in the agricultural sectors in Vietnam which is the collapse of the trading network when shocks on the supply and demand side occurred. According to Dr Bui, this problem is hard to tackle if many products are considered. This is because the market operation is product specific. For instance, how a trader conducts business in a fish market will be different than in a fruit market.

More importantly, Dr Bui suggested that the project needs to continue in a larger scale to assist the government in making evidence-based policies. Currently, the project surveyed 500 households and 50 traders in the 3 villages around Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Besides the financial constraint of conducting a large-scale survey, the research team also revealed the challenges when contacting the respondents. For example, the research team had to build a certain level of trust as there were numerous attempts to use a survey as a marketing tool. In addition to assessing the resilience of the trading network, establishing contact with the respondents is another success of the project. If the project continues, the MARD, according to Dr Bui, will provide assistance in the next round.

Study sites

In March 2022, we conducted a survey at 03 sites: (i) Van Hoi commune, Tam Duong district, Vinh Phuc province; (ii) Van Duc commune, Gia Lam district, Hanoi and (iii) Coi Ha village, Pham Tran commune, Gia Loc district, Hai Duong province. Van Hoi and Van Duc belong to the peri-urban areas of Vinh Phuc and Hanoi city. Meanwhile, Coi Ha is further from cities or urban areas. However, up to now, these areas have more than 30 years of experience in vegetable production.

According to the interviews with the village authorities and the Cooperatives, the vegetable production area in Van Hoi is about 300 hectares and there are 800 households involved in producing vegetables. These households are mainly located in 03 villages: Van Giua, Van Sau and Van Noi. In Van Duc, the agricultural land for vegetable production is about 200 hectares, distributed in 02 villages: Trung Quan and Chu Xa. Although the vegetable area in Van Duc is smaller than it is in Van Hoi, the vegetable households are higher, up to 1500. Finally, in Coi Ha, the area for vegetable production is 29 ha and there are 300 households producing vegetables.

Sample selection

To generate samples, the first attempt is to find the list of households producing vegetables in the study areas. In Van Hoi, the research team found this list from both the Green Van Hoi Cooperative and the village authority. In Van Duc, the research team accesses the list of households producing vegetables from Van Duc Safe Vegetable Cooperative only because all households are its member. Meanwhile, at the study site Coi Ha (of Pham Tran), this list was provided by the village authority because there are no cooperatives like in Van Hoi and Van Duc. To extract the list of samples, the research team used the Random sampling command in SPSS. Accordingly, we are supposed to generate 200 samples in Van Hoi, 189 samples in Van Duc, and 124 samples in Coi Ha.

Data collection

Due to regulations on Covid-19 prevention and control, it was impossible to conduct a direct interview vegetable households at their homes. After obtaining permission from the local authorities, the research team decided to conduct interviews with households producing vegetables at the communal hall of the villages to ensure social distancing. The cooperative and the village authorities send the invitation to the households defined in the sampling list to participate in the interviews. The research team asked the cooperative and the village authority to send invitations because they most accurately identify the interviewees who are directly involved in the household’s vegetable production.

However, many vegetable-producing households did not come to the communal hall at the first visited site, Van Hoi, for the interview, even though they had an invitation. The reasonable reason is that due to favorable weather, households take advantage of the time to do their work on the field, rather than pay attention to the interview. To archive the goal, the research team, thanks to village authorities and cooperatives, went to interview producing vegetable households in their fields instead of at the village communal hall.

In Van Duc and Coi Ha, the implementation of data collection has more advantages than it was in Van Hoi, the whole invited households have come to the communal hall for the interview. Cooperatives in Van Duc has sent interview invitations to vegetable-producing households through production teams (each residential cluster has a cooperative production team). Meanwhile, the village authority in Coi Ha has sent interview invitations to households through a mass organization (Farmers Union). Then, during the survey, the households that have not yet participated were directly recalled through the village’s public speaker.

In addition, when the survey in Van Hoi ended, we detected 3 households that were not on the selected sample list (maybe these households have heard about the survey from other farmers and came to participate). We decided to keep these 3 cases in the survey sample because we still ensure randomness, objectivity, and ensure sample size as planned.

While doing the survey, the research team also encountered households to send inappropriate members for the interview (for example, the child received an invitation but asked his father or mother to go instead). These people do not directly carry out vegetable production. For this case, the research team did not collect information. There exit 06 cases in Van Hoi and 03 cases in Coi Ha as mentioned above.

Dealing with obstacles for the questions using Likert parameter

Behaviour-reaction questions using a Likert scale (with 5 levels: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = neutral, 4 = disagree 5 = strongly disagree) are sometime generalized in the field (i.e. without a specific situation). Often, this makes it difficult for the interviewees to visualize the issues if the interviewers use the original questions in the questionnaire. In this case, we first use critical questions such as how, and why to determine the real implications of the interviewee’s answer. Based on that information, we reconfirm their answer options.

In case the interviewees do not understand the original question, the solution is to create sub-questions with a specific situation related to real life. This leads the respondent to easily imagine. Then the obtained information will be translated into the answer choices of the original question.

For example, with the question: “If there is something I should do, I will make sure it gets done before anything else,” it works into 02 situational sub-questions:

Q1. You are supposed to plan to go to spray pesticides on vegetables today, but your neighbour asks you to drink. If there is no one to ask to do, how will you handle it?

a) Decline the invitation of a neighbour and keep going to work in the fields

b) Not fixed: Depending on your mood, you can choose to work or drink.

c) Leave the farm work until the next day and accept the invitation of the neighbours

Q2. You are supposed to plan to do land preparation for the next vegetable crop today, but outside the temperature is so high. How will you handle it?

a) Still working even though it’s hot weather

b) Depending on the case

c) Put off the tillage for a day (or even more), and wait for the temperature cooling down.

Q 1	Q2	Translation
a	a	strongly agree (1)
a	b	agree (2)
b	a	agree (2)
b	b	neutral (3)
a	c	neutral (3)
c	a	neutral (3)
b	c	disagree (4)
c	b	disagree (4)
c	c	strongly disagree (5)

The determinants of the farmer’s selection of local traders

We find that vegetable-producing households choosing local traders may derive from their social relationships outside the scope of economic transactions. Specifically, traders are relatives or neighbours, friends of the households. These people tend to receive a priority when households sell their products. Selling vegetables, in this case, carries the meaning of maintaining social solidarity and uniting the community through economic cooperation (between households and relatives or neighbours). This might make the relationship between members of the community become closer and more intimate.

It may also derive from mutual benefit between vegetable producers and local traders. Vegetable producers need a sustained market while local traders need a sustained supply. Therefore, whenever the price fluctuates (high or low), traders will still ensure the purchase of vegetables for households even if this action may lead to some economic loss. Reversely, vegetable producer will commit to selling their product to traditional local traders (not to others) when the price goes up. Given the limited information from the survey, we can not draw any further conclusions or judgements yet, we think we need more information for this.

Finally, the price of vegetables offered by local traders might influence on the choice of households. It seems that collectors often offer vegetable producing households the same price and they are not the man who decides the price of vegetables. This price, as observed by the research team, is determined at wholesale markets located outside the survey area. When the price of vegetables does not differ between the local traders, the vegetable producing households pay less attention to the choice for other collectors. These households still need to maintain social relationships with those relatives or neighbours.

On June 8th 2022, De Montfort University and the Institute for Applied Economics and Social Value organized a workshop that focused on the problem of food security, and the resilience of the food supply chain amid climate change. Starting the workshop, Dr Dang-Trung Le, the director of Real-Time Analytics presented the RTSurvey, a web-based platform that allows us to collect data seamlessly from farmers in rural Vietnam. This app is a smart way to acquire information regarding the food supply chain, especially in rural areas. Not only it reduces massively the collection and processing costs of a survey, but it also increases the reliability of the data. The app interested a number of attendees, including Dr. Carmen Hubbard from Newcastle University. She continued the workshop by presenting her collaborative work with colleagues from Newcastle University and the University of Economics in Hochiminh City. Being a project that involved a large multi-disciplinary team, it showed the enormous opportunities to increase the yields, both quantity and quality, of farmers in Vietnam. Dr Hubbard also presented several challenges to the project, one of which was the small size of the farmers in Vietnam. This problem made monitoring and supporting these farmers much more challenging. We had a lively debate on how modern technology such as RTSurvey could be brought into the potential strategies to enhance the outcomes of the farmers.

Dr Quy-Duong Le from the Vietnam National University of Agriculture then presented how he and his team conducted a survey in the villages surrounding Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Despite working on a limited budget, the team managed to survey 500 households and more than 100 collectors/traders. Additional challenges including the interpretation of the questions to the farmers who were not familiar with such research were also presented. Good lessons were drawn from these challenges when conducting research in developing countries such as the case in Vietnam.

Moving from Vietnam to other countries, Professor Bhavani Shankar from the University of Sheffield discussed how challenging it has been to establish a climate-resilient market for nutrient-dense food. For instance, in India when the temperature is rising due to climate change, foods are quickly perishing. Small and low-income farmers cannot afford to have cooling systems to preserve the quality of their products before they reach the markets. Segun Fadare, a PhD candidate from the University of Reading presented the effects of conflicts on livestock in Nigeria. These conflicts, which were rising in recent years, had huge implications for nutrition and health in the country. Dr Godwin Okafor from De Montfort University then concluded the lively and productive workshop by presenting his work with a comprehensive dataset on the various types of conflicts in Nigeria that affected the outcomes of the food industry.

As organizers of the workshop, we thanked all the presenters and audience that contributed to the success of the workshop. We expect more to come from these inspiring and interesting projects which help us to understand the situation of food security in the world and develop the solutions to this increasingly worrying problem.

A survey was conducted in the 3 villages nearby Hanoi.

On the 28th February/1st March 2022 we held an online workshop to bring together academics, policy makers and practitioners interested in how trading networks in rural farming communities can be made more resilient to shocks and climate change. The schedule for the workshop was:

Day 1: Monday 28th February 9-11am UK time – Measuring Resilience in Rural Trading Networks

9-10: Presentations including:

Marcin Waniek (New York University Abu Dhabi), ‘Network resilience to random failure and strategic attack’.

Quang Nguyen (Duy Tan University), ‘On the measure of resilience for complex networks’.

10-11: Open discussion on how to evaluate trading networks and measure resilience.

Day 2: Tuesday 1st March 9-11am UK time – Policy to Improve the Resilience of Trading Networks

9-10: Presentations including:

Thanh Ngo (Vietnam National University of Agriculture), ‘Trading networks of vegetable in rural Vietnam: local collectors and co-operatives’.

Dr Hien Vo and Dr Huong Dinh (Vietnamese German University), ‘The relationship between farmers and middlemen in  Vietnam’.

10-11: Open discussion on the implementation of interventions to change trading networks and improve resilience.