Early last week, the CGIAR Livestock and Fish Program convened an internal meeting to take stock of plans for the proposed work on smallholder pig value chains in Vietnam. Participants came from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

This was a first opportunity for the various participants to refine a detailed implementation plan for our Vietnam work in 2012.

Over the course of the two days, individual roles and responsibilities were assigned to team members. The main ‘deliverables’ in 2012 include ‘site selection’ for the research work, a ‘situation analysis’ that will scope out the main challenges and opportunities, reviews of approaches and lessons learned in the sector, and detailed plans for rapid value chain assessment using a toolkit under development by the Program.

While ILRI and CIAT have both worked before in Vietnam, the approach of the Program offers opportunity and challenges.  It builds on and connects different existing projects and much of the discussions looked at ways to align different activities to generate ‘value chain’ wide activities and interventions.

Thus, we already identified ongoing related work on animal feeding (led by CIAT, funded by IFAD), food safety (led by ILRI, funded by ACIAR) and animal genetic resources (led by ILRI, funded by GEF). The aim is to bring this together, identify additional inputs, and upgrade the smallholder pig value chain in Vietnam.

More information on our work in Vietnam

Basic information on the meeting

View Lucy Lapar’s presentation on Pig Value Chains in Vietnam: