Realizing The Potential Of Agroforestry In Vietnam

In Vietnam, traditional agroforestry systems at the landscape level have been adopted since early 1960s under two common practices: garden-fishpond-livestock (known as VAC) and forest-garden-fishpond-livestock (known as RVAC). It was only in 1990s that non-government organizations (NGOs) and government agencies began to introduce innovative agroforestry techniques and systems at the field level. However, wide scale adoption of agroforestry remains challenged, among others, by lack of market linkages of agroforestry products, low economic attractiveness to farmers, and limited institutional or policy support. The time for a ‘robust’ agroforestry research and development effort in Vietnam is ripe. Therefore, Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VAAS) and ICRAF Vietnam co-organized the ‘First National Agroforestry Workshop’ for Vietnam, on December 7, 2012 at the VAAS Campus. This volume is a compilation of research papers presented at the workshop under four different themes: (i) History and current status of agroforestry in Vietnam; (ii) Overview of agroforestry in the tropics; (iii) Technical aspects of agroforestry; and (iv) Socio-economic and policy aspects of agroforestry.