Developing productive and profitable smallholder beef enterprises in Central Vietnam

The growing demand for beef in Vietnam is providing an opportunity for smallholder crop-livestock farmers in Central Vietnam to increase household incomes through more productive beef breeding and fattening enterprises as part of their farming systems. However, significant challenges that need to be overcome to ensure these enterprises can be both profitable and sustainable include the low fertility of sandy soils in the region, long dry seasons, scarcity of good quality feed, and poor cattle management practices.

ACIAR Project LPS/2012/062 had the overall objective to assist in developing productive and profitable smallholder beef enterprises in Central Vietnam. The project sought to do this by developing more efficient smallholder cow-calf and cattle growing systems through improved feeding and management, developing stronger integration with markets and developing knowledge exchange and adoption pathways for expanding project impacts.