This paper examines the production efficiency of 2079 rice farms in Hanoi (Vietnam) in 2018 and the role of formal and informal knowledge on their efficiency. Our empirical results showed that, in general, Hanoi’s rice farms performed quite well in 2018. The differences in the specific performance of each farm could be explained by the farmer’s characteristics (age, education and gender of the head of household) as well as by certain external factors (support programs or distance to city center). We found that self-learning through experience did not obviously improve the farm’s production efficiency whilst education and training were notably important. We further suggest that regional councils and agricultural support programs played an important role in helping farmers improve their efficiency and sustainability.

Farmers’ associations play an important role to help members increase their access to supports of information, capital, and technology; bring benefits to members; and partly promote production, enhance productivity, and increase income. This paper systematizes the theoretical foundation and empirical evidence on income difference between the member and non-member farmers and identifies factors that affect their decisions to join associations. By comparing specific characteristics between the member and non-member farmers, the paper examines the impact of joining farmers’ associations on the income of tea farmers in Vietnam by using the data from the survey of 742 farms. In our sample, 376 respondents are members and 366 non-members of associations in the four largest tea-producing areas, which cover 30 provinces in Vietnam. The paper uses OLS regression model to identify the factors that influence the decision of tea farms to join farmers’ organizations and tobit model to assess more detailed impacts of membership on income. The findings show that the farmers, who are members of an association, are more helpful in the ability to access better market services and more tea prices, and are more likely to earn a higher average income than those are non-members. Moreover, their memberships result in an increase of 0.166 unit of income. The research results also show that other factors, including labor, tea price, share of tea sold, farmer age, tea area, ability to access extension services, and credit services, affect the farmer’s income.

Combining the systemic indicators of sustainable agriculture provided by the Indicateurs de Durabilité des Exploitations Agricoles (IDEA) framework and the pairwise comparison method provided by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique, this study examined 644 farmers in the Northern region of Vietnam (using Bac Giang province as a case study) to identify and rank those important factors according to their contributions to the farmer's practices. We found that the Economic dimension is the most important factor that contributes 54% toward the overall Sustainable Agriculture, followed by the Socio-territorial dimension (29%) and then the Agroecology dimension (17%). We further argue that while it is reasonable for farmers to focus on the sustainable economic performance aspect of their farms, there is a need for the local authorities to be involved to maintain a balanced sustainable agriculture development in the region. K E Y W O R D S agriculture, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Indicateurs de Durabilité des Exploitations Agricoles (IDEA), Northern region of Vietnam, sustainable development | INTRODUCTIONThe agriculture sector is becoming more important, especially in developing countries, because of its central role in food safety, hunger and

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For a common small- to medium-sized fish farm in an agricultural-based economy, monitoring costs is very important, since financial constraints are always a problem for these farmers. This will be thus easier if the farmers can get access to external funds. This paper used data envelopment analysis (DEA) to examine the technical efficiency, cost efficiency and allocative efficiency of 639 fish farms in the Red River Delta (RRD) in Vietnam in 2018 to see how fish farmers control their costs and if financial access can really help in this matter. We found that these fish farms were very inefficient, meaning that they did not succeed in monitoring and allocating their costs and resources. Among the factors that could improve their efficiency, we found that developing the rural banking system to provide more financial access for RRD fish farms is an important solution.