Impact of Introducing "Good Agricultural Practices (GAP)" into Rice Production in Can Tho, Vietnam.

“Good Agricultural Practice (GAP)” is defined as a set of practices that address environmental, economic and social sustainability for on-farm processes, and result in safe, high-quality food and non-food agricultural products. Several national governments have introduced rice GAP to enhance the sustainable rice production, but its impact has not yet been investigated. Using the case study of rice production in Mekong Delta, Vietnam, this presentation aims to show the impact of GAP dissemination by Vietnamese government on sustainable rice production, by means of the environmental and economic indicators. Vietnam is currently the second largest rice exporter in the world, and the large share of exporting rice is produced in Mekong Delta. This is because of the highly intensified production system: production amount increased more than 1.8 times between 1995 and 2011 due to the introduction of triple rice cropping and yield improvement. To increase net income while reducing the environmental footprint, the Vietnamese government started a program named “One must do, five reductions (1M5R)” in 2009. This program emphasizes using certified seeds, and also aims to reduce seed rate, fertilizer applications, pesticide sprays, irrigation amount and post harvest loss. A pilot study conducted in 2010 showed that seed rate, the amount of nitrogen fertilizer, number of insecticide spray and times of irrigation decreased 34%, 16%, 65%, 20%, respectively, without yield penalty. To create incentive for farmers to adopt 1M5R, a new business model called “small farmers, large field (SFLF)” and a VietGAP certification program were also initiated by the government in 2013 and 2012, respectively. We will present the difference of the environmental and economic performance among three GAP certification levels (Control, SFLF farmers and VietGAP farmers), which have been calculated from the results of field surveys conducted in 2013 and 2014.