PROJECT ASSESSMENTS - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 191

1) Future research on Rural Development and Sustainable Agriculture

• There is an enormous need for more applied research on vegetable cultivation.

Especially improvements in agronomic practices can be achieved. Hardly any
clear GAPs are available for farmers. The VEGSYS project developed a strong
team which can develop GAPs. So far this has been done for four different vege-
tables, while in one village (of 400 farms) about 30 to 40 different vegetables are
cultivated.

• Currently vegetable production is rotated during the year with rice production,

which has a very bad impact on soil structure and costs farmers a lot of extra
labour. Furthermore, farm income could be tripled if vegetables could be produced
year round. The possibilities for such a radical farming system change should be
studied and experimented in detail.

• Quantification at both micro and macro level of the impacts of new emerging

supply chains (supermarkets) on rural development, poverty reduction and parti-
cipation of the poor.

2) The role of research in generating policy-relevant information in support of LNV
and other policy institutions

The project team generated policy briefs which contain recommendations on how to
stimulate a transition towards more sustainable horticulture and poverty reduction.

3) Partnerships and development efforts in the South

• The VEGSYS project had a clear development impact in stimulating rural deve-

lopment by linking the farmers to high end consumer markets. This was done
through partnerships with the private sector.

• The permanent presence of the project coordinator in Vietnam stimulated the

development of networks with other research projects, institutes, donors and
private sector.

4) Interactions between research and decision makers, both in The Netherlands and
the South

• Within China and Vietnam a lot of interaction with district and provincial level

policymakers was achieved. But this resulted in no clear outputs. Only in Vietnam
the intense relations with provincial level policymakers facilitated all arrange-
ments to get permits for the Dutch company to build a post harvest centre in the
project village. In China the provincial level policymakers were very interested
in the financial results of the farm monitoring, but it is not clear what they did
with this information.

• An interesting link was developed with a national level governmental organi-

zation (ICAMA) who is responsible in China for the licensing of pesticides for