Notifications On: Timely Climate Alerts Boost Farmers’ Resilience Across Viet Nam’s Mekong River Delta
In Viet Nam’s Mekong River Delta, farmers are receiving valuable information in the form of Agro-Climatic Bulletins. The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT was the sole international organisation recognised by the Vietnamese government for expanding these services to reach over 270,000 farmers.
Enabling hundreds of thousands smallholder farmers to practice climate service-informed decision making, Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) honored the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT its Certificate of Merit for developing and disseminating Agro-Climatic Bulletins (ACBs) across the 13 provinces in the Mekong River Delta.
“ACBs contribute to the success of production at all levels from central to local levels, helping farmers change their farming practices, reducing input costs as well as crop losses,” Ms. Tran Thi My Hanh, technical staff of MARD’s Department of Crop Production (DCP) said. “The recognition emphasises the contribution of ACBs to agricultural development, encouraging and motivating individuals and government agencies to maintain and further scaling out ACBs in the country.”
The Alliance is the sole international organisation to receive this certificate, alongside two other local agencies and 10 government staff, due to its pivotal role advancing rural and agricultural development in the country’s delta region. The timely release of the bulletins remains instrumental in empowering more than 270,000 farmers to make informed crop decisions, enabling them to better manage risks and prepare against unpredictable climate conditions.
Advisories through multiple channels
The bulletins provide localised recommendations, aligned with climate adaptation and mitigation strategies based on seasonal, monthly, and 10-day climate and weather forecasts. These advisories allow farmers to significantly reduce the risk of production losses, particularly in the face of challenging climatic conditions such as saltwater intrusion and drought, a local media reported.
Currently, ACBs are active in 70 districts and 547 communes in the Mekong River Delta. While farmers are reached through multiple communication channels – such as digital media, loudspeakers, printed posters and capacity training sessions by government agencies and civil society groups – the bulletins have been largely disseminated through the mobile messaging application, Zalo which is the most common messaging app used by Vietnamese, including smallholder farmers.
On Zalo, farmers are notified of tailored district-level advisories every 10 days for more efficient crop farming – saving them both time and resources by knowing when it is best to sow seeds, apply inputs, and harvest crops, among others. The messaging application alone has efficiently reached more than 50,000 users within 979 chat groups, at least those who have access to smart phones and the internet.
Video: Agro-Climatic Bulletins for Vietnam ‘s Farmers via Mobile Messaging App
Integration into Viet Nam’s Policy
The bulletins were piloted on commune level in 2020, replicated in one province in 2021, expanded to seven provinces in 2022, and scaled to all 13 provinces in the Mekong River Delta in 2023.
With the agriculture ministry’s landmark decision to recognise the ACBs as technical advance, the advisory services became part of Viet Nam’s policy, which, the government hopes, will contribute to the state’s crop management and national climate change adaptation strategy. It has received an annual national budget of 400 million Vietnamese Dong (approximately 17,000 USD), paving the way for other provinces to follow suit and employ the ACB approach with a better chance of accessing local government funding.
The institutionalisation of the bulletins has since prompted DCP to issue regional instruction letters and establish a regional Technical Working Group (TWG) to further support the bulletins’ implementation across all 13 provinces.
Amplifying farmers’ voices
The Alliance employed a multi-stakeholder and participatory approach in the implementation of the bulletins, securing farmers and local experts at the front and center of climate change action.
In a series of capacity sharing sessions since the launch of the ACBs in 2020, farmers and agriculture professionals have played key roles in developing the bulletins as they provide relevant expertise on the status of crop growth and local climate conditions in the area. They have also been involved in determining the most appropriate type of ACBs: from the content, design, and timing of dissemination through communication channels such as online messaging groups and on-site meetings.
For Mr. Le Thanh Tung, vice director of DCP in the South of Viet Nam, the participatory nature of the bulletins increases the tool’s sustainability: “The department reaffirms its continued collaboration with the Alliance to further improve the bulletins towards digitalisation, ensuring the efficiency and quality of advisories while making it more accessible to meet farmers’ needs.”
What’s next?
The recent recognition has fueled the Alliance and its partners to increase the reach of the bulletins, serving more smallholder farmers beyond the delta region, Climate Action Lead in Asia Cornelis Swaans said.
Applying Human-Centered Design principles, the ACB approach is being improved to ensure that users and partners are placed in the center of the development process. This approach guarantees that products and services are being adapted and improved based on evolving needs. Supplementary training materials are also being developed and will be integrated as QR codes in the bulletins’ 10-day advisory shared through Zalo, which will then be tested with users in the coming months.
The Alliance and DCP are keen to optimise the quality and dissemination process of the bulletins through incorporating low-emission, nutrition-sensitive, and conservation agriculture advisories, and promote two-way interaction with farmers, using a digital platform.
With strong government buy-in, the bulletins will have an opportunity to be scaled up across Viet Nam to help accelerate agricultural productivity and resilience to climate change while helping farmers stabilise their livelihoods under an unpredictable, ever-changing climate.