During the Fodder Adoption Project our Vietnam case was particularly successful building as it did on previous forage development efforts in Vietnam led by CIAT. Through the Fodder Adoption Project and previous projects the livestock system in study sites moved from a subsistence system to one based on marketing of improved cattle to distant markets.
Some of the key success factors in that work were:
(i) a convincing innovation – the use of farm-grown fodder – that provided immediate benefits to farmers and provided a vision for local stakeholders;
(ii) a participatory, systems-oriented innovation process that emphasised capacity strengthening;
(iii) a value chain approach that linked farmers and local traders to markets;
(iv) the formation of a loosely structured coalition of local stakeholders that facilitated and managed the innovation process; and
(v) technical support over a sufficiently long time period to allow innovation processes to become sustainable
We wrote this work up for the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability and as part of Fair Trade Fortnight, the journal publisher has made the article open access. Until Mar 9 you can access the article free of charge here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14735903.2013.779074
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