A World Bank-backed project has been criticised by rice farmers for high costs and poor returns. Can its proposed second phase salvage things?
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The Vietnam Sustainable Agriculture Transformation Project aims to replace unsustainable rice-farming practices, such as heavily irrigating rice paddies, which emits large amounts of methane. (Image: Godong / Alamy)
Trần Thanh Bảy, a 65-year-old farmer in southern Vietnam, is already anticipating his next rice harvest. It is August and the latest harvest in this district – Tân Thạnh in Long An province, between Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta – has just concluded. Sitting on a chair in his yard, Bảy shares his rice-tending process. Every day, he wakes up at 4.30am to inspect the crop. For an hour, he diligently checks for pests, ensuring pesticides or fertilisers are sprayed promptly.
Such an attentive process is necessary because this is not typical rice cultivation. Bảy, a member of the Hoàng Gia farming cooperative, has been growing an emissions-reducing variety of rice.
In 2018, Bảy was the chief of his village, Nguyễn Sơn. That year officers from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development approached him about the Vietnam Sustainable Agriculture Transformation Project (VnSAT). This environmentally focused programme aims to enhance both rice yield and grain quality while reducing the crop’s notoriously high methane emissions. Bảy was attracted by the potential benefits of new rice varieties, including reduced emissions and cultivation costs, as well as by the provision of free scientific knowledge to locals.
Inspired, in 2019 Bảy rallied Nguyễn Sơn‘s farmers to take part. They are now among more than 150,000 farmers in Long An and Đồng Tháp provinces who have been participating in VnSAT since its 2015 launch.
But several years into the programme, Bảy is among many participants who are disappointed. They have experienced high costs, lower-than-expected yields and a perceived mismanagement of funds.
A solution to paddy cultivation’s methane emissions
Originally running from 2015 to 2022, VnSAT had a US$301 million budget (7.3 trillion Vietnamese dong) financed through an agricultural enhancement credit agreement between Vietnam and the World Bank. Vietnam’s agriculture ministry oversaw VnSAT’s implementation; each participating province had a different VnSAT start date, which meant that some, such as Long An, were incorporated late into the seven-year timeframe.
VnSAT aimed to help restructure Vietnam’s agricultural sector by supporting sustainable rice and coffee production. Its rice component sought to inform farmers about emissions-reducing farming techniques, change cultivation practices and develop the necessary infrastructure.
