Abstract
Vietnam is supportive of the transition to sustainable rice production in the Mekong Delta. The national program promoted best management practices for rice production through “1 Must Do and 5 Reductions” (1M5R). This review traces the technological development and uptake of 1M5R in national policies and by end-users. We highlight the outcomes from various policy-supported initiatives and unpack plausible pathways that generated the widespread adoption of 1M5R in eight provinces in the Mekong River Delta: at least 104,448 smallholder rice farmers were reached, and 1M5R practices adopted on 113,870 hectares. The scaling of 1M5R was enabled through a convergence of different socio-technical systems with varied foci, including sustainability certification, contract farming, consolidation of production, and improved use of inputs, aside from the development of sustainable technologies. In addition, 1M5R was promoted with incentives generated by a World Bank project and other initiatives in line with a national policy of increasing the quality of rice production for national and international markets. The interconnections of varied socio-technical systems, enacted by different intermediaries, catalyzed the spread of 1M5R. The widespread adoption by smallholder farmers increased their profits and raised awareness across diverse stakeholder groups of the higher marketability of rice produced with sustainable practices.
Highlights
Rice is the staple crop in most Southeast Asian countries [1]
There was a realization that many farmers were not using good-quality seed. This led to an initiative to extend the success of Ba Giam, Ba Tang to embrace a broader set of best management practices for irrigated rice production
Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) Certification. Another parallel initiative was the establishment of sustainability and certification standards for rice production through the Vietnamese Good Agricultural Practice (VietGAP) program
Summary
Rice is the staple crop in most Southeast Asian countries [1]. Recent analyses of yield gaps for lowland rice production identified opportunities to positively address yield shortfalls through the adoption of best management practices [2]. There are systemic intermediaries who operate “in networks instead of ‘one to one’ mediation” [17] They help to articulate the options and demand for knowledge, technologies or other processes, support the alignment of actors, and enable learning [18]. They connect experimental findings, or new ideas and products with the rest of the innovation system actors to enable changes to the current practices of varied actors This is needed, as large-scale rice farming requires collective actions and alignment across different stakeholders in the value chain [22]. These intermediaries engage a socio-technical system wherein specific actors (e.g., farmers, service providers, contractors) employ different technologies or combinations of technologies [23] They are linked together through specific organizational arrangements, rules, and incentives that inform their behavior in relation to 1M5R. We examine the technological adaptation, organizational arrangements, intermediaries, incentives, and rules in the socio-technical system around 1M5R
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