Vietnam moves towards sustainable agriculture

Natalie DiNicola, vice president of Sustainability & Signature Partnerships, Monsanto

>> Partnering and innovatingfor sustainable agriculture

Vietnam is now known as one of the leading food producers in the world. Do you view Vietnam’s agricultural growth as sustainable and what are the most challenging issues for the sector at this time?

I am very impressed with the progress that Vietnam has made in terms of increasing agricultural development here over the last 20 years or so. I think that today Vietnam, as well as other countries, is facing a lot more challenges in growing agriculture and a lot of these challenges have to do with climate change, a scarcity of natural resources and faster urbanisation. These challenges put enormous pressure on agricultural growth. The Vietnamese government is taking a fresh look at the country’s agriculture and thinking about what needs to be done as we try to address these global challenges and enable the Vietnamese farmers and agriculture to develop.

The Vietnamese government is taking a good look at which crops should be invested in and rice is still such an important crop that I am sure will continue to be. But I think there is a clear recognition that Vietnam can use its resources more efficiently and diversify into other high-value crops such as corn. This will also enable Vietnam to become self-sufficient in corn and boost some other industries such as fish-farming and livestock.

Vietnam’s agricultural sector is facing a reduction in public investment while the sector is becoming less attractive to the private sector. What are your viewpoints on this?

Importantly, the government can establish policies that really enable the private sector’s investments. So really a business-enabling tax policy is critical because that allows  the private sector to develop in line with the government’s vision with a clear understanding of how they can develop their business. I have seen in Vietnam that there is quite a bit of infrastructure investment to help farmers and provide extension services for farmers. When we think about what it’s going to take for farmers to be more productive, we must look at it comprehensively, so farmers need better seeds and other kinds of inputs, they need information and extension services, access to credit and market linkage. We work with the government and other parts of the value chain to try to fit all of the different pieces together. Therefore when the government establishes business-enabling policies and is open to all partners, it is one good way of trying to attract investment into the country.  

Foreign companies have so far been co-operating with the Vietnamese government on public-private partnerships (PPP) in the agricultural sector. Have such models seen enough involvement from Vietnamese farmers?

The way we approach this partnership is that we first try to identify who the right partners are. When we develop a partnership, we believe farmers are at the centre. Partnership has to be locally-led, enabling government vision, and tailoring the project to local needs. Therefore, the government and local organisations play a very important role. We start by trying to understand each other and how we can best complement each other because partnerships should be really about leveraging the best out of all the different people and organisations involved. So we start out on a smaller scale to understand each other and that is what we have done in Vietnam. But today we feel very optimistic and excited about what we can do together with farmers and the Vietnamese government and other partners to scale up as much more as possible, particularly in the area of corn.

How you do evaluate Monsanto’s partnership programmes in Vietnam so far and how could we maintain these models in an effective and sustainable manner?

Monsanto has been partnering with Vietnamese farmers for over a decade and in 2013 had 800,000 corn farmers. The company spent more than $1 million on seed research and development to develop seeds suited to local agro-climatic conditions to enable farmers to increase corn productivity in line with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) goals. We are taking a PPP approach on the Rice-to-Corn Rotation Initiative by the MARD in the Mekong Delta in partnership with farmers, local agriculture and feed industry authorities. Monsanto’s better seed, practices and market linkages have helped 8,800 farmers in the Mekong Delta earn over $1 million in incremental income, and has saved 80 per cent of the time, cost and labour from 2,200ha and 4,400ha in the rice-to-corn rotation in 2013 and 2014, respectively. As I have mentioned, the farmers are at the centre of the partnership and it really should fit with the vision the government has set for the agricultural sector. So it is intended to be sustainable both in terms of producing more and conserving resources, and also really driving economic development for the farmers and the whole country.