A Community Innovation Fund (CIF) is a simple kick-start fund to support farmer interest groups who have limited access to formal financial services for implementing climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices. A CIF can be implemented as sole fund or as co-investment to community savings and loans groups. In this publication, a step-by-step guide for facilitating a CIF in a community, based on experiences from My Loi Climate-Smart Village (CSV), was provided. My Loi is one of three CCAFS CSVs in Vietnam, where participatory CSA practices are being tested and adopted.

This article highlights the experiences and lessons generated by the project collaborators in enhancing the adaptive capacities of selected upland farming communities in Southeast Asia. The project collaborators employed capability building programs, such as farmers' and technicians' training, local climate change awareness programs, cross-farm visits, demonstration plots showcasing agroforestry technologies as climate change adaptation (CCA) strategies, and linking science with policies

What are key characteristics of rural innovators? How are their experiences similar for women and men, and how are they different? To examine these questions, this study draw on individual interviews with 336 rural women and men known in their communities for trying out new things in agriculture. The data form part of 84 GENNOVATE community case studies from 19 countries. Building on study participants’ own reflections and experiences with innovation in their agricultural livelihoods, we combine variable-oriented analysis and analysis of specific individuals’ lived experience.

The purpose of this study is to develop a robust, rigorous and replicable methodology that is flexible to data limitations and spatially prioritizes the vulnerability of agriculture and rural livelihoods to climate change. The methodology was applied in Vietnam, Uganda and Nicaragua, three contrasting developing countries that are particularly threatened by climate change. We conceptualize vulnerability to climate change following the widely adopted combination of sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity.

This study focuses on the accumulated indigenous knowledge of the Yao ethnic minority in Bac Kan Province of Vietnam. Through centuries of observation and experimentation, the Yao people have developed complex farming systems, cultural practices, and a knowledge base well-suited to their environments. Data for this study was collected through surveys, interviews, and focus group discussions to gather indigenous knowledge on native crop varieties and animal breeds, weather forecasting, and the timing and location of cultivation practices.

This study explored the usefulness of market orientation in an agricultural value chain in an emerging economy: Vietnam. Drawing on data from 190 actors in a beef cattle value chain in Vietnam's Central Highlands, the study examined the relationship between market orientation and innovation. The findings indicate that there is no significant relationship between market orientation and performance. However, customer orientation and inter-functional coordination are positively related to innovation, and there is a positive relationship between innovation and financial performance.

This paper surveys members of a beef cattle value chain in Vietnam's Central Highlands to examine the translation of value chain actor's resources into positional advantage and financial performance in an emerging country. Using structural equation modeling techniques, the paper estimates a path model to explore how resources are linked to positional advantage and ultimately financial performance. This study attempts to contribute to the literature in two ways.

The Northern Mountainous Region (NMR) of Vietnam is characterised by great physical, social and cultural diversity. It covers a large geographical area, is home to many ethnic minority populations, has an under-developed infrastructure with low levels of urbanisa-tion, and agricultural production plays a highly important role. Since the 1950s, Vi-etnam’s agricultural sector has had several ups and downs due to being significantly in-fluenced by shifting national policies.

Participatory approaches have been discussed as alternatives to and complementary elements of more conventional research on sustainable land use and rural development in upland areas of Southeast Asia. Following a brief overview of the history of participatory approaches (Sect. 9.1), this chapter discusses the potential and limitations of applying Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools to field research practice in Vietnam (Sect. 9.2) and of involving stakeholders in priority setting, modeling and environmental valuation in the Southeast Asian uplands (Sect. 9.3).

The general aims of this chapter are to provide an overview of the historical development of rural advisory and knowledge provision in Vietnam, and how legal frameworks have changed over time, demonstrate how more client-centered extension approaches can be translated and utilized at the field level, and focus on examples of novel approaches to knowledge generation and diffusion, those currently evolving due to initiatives driven by state, private and NGO actors, or developed within the framework of the Uplands Program.