Overview of the working session.

At the working session, the AFD delegation presented the results of seven support activities of the ASSET project currently being implemented in Dien Bien province. The ASSET project aims to harness the potential of ecological agriculture in Southeast Asia to transform agricultural and food systems into more sustainable, safer, and more inclusive systems. In Vietnam, the project is implemented in Son La and Dien Bien provinces, running from 2020 to 2025, with field activities starting in 2022. The project implements seven main support activities, such as: developing green roughage and livestock; improving livestock feed safety; developing quality coffee; protecting crops towards ecological agriculture; enhancing value chain recognition; and building local partners' capacities.

Mr. Le Thanh Do, Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee and Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee, presented local gifts to the working delegation.

Through nearly three years of project implementation, via seven activity areas, the project supports livestock farmers with activities such as: growing grass, silage production, composting livestock manure, contributing to livestock environment management; especially household livestock farming, reducing the burden of livestock waste treatment, helping localities meet criteria 17.8 and 17.9 of the new rural criteria set. Additionally, through support activities in cultivation, farmers accessed methods for intercropping multifunctional trees with long-term industrial crops, improving income, and contributing to promoting ecological and circular agriculture in the future.

The delegates took souvenir photos together.

Mr. Le Thanh Do, Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee and Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee, highly appreciated the results of the ASSET project's activities in the province. At the same time, he hopes that in the future, AFD will continue to support the implementation and share experiences in producing ecological, circular, multi-value agricultural models associated with improving the rural environmental landscape, combining production development with eco-tourism and relaxation in the province. The focus areas include: continued support, monitoring, and evaluation of the effectiveness of intercropping soil-improving plants with macadamia trees; researching sustainable development solutions for macadamia and coffee trees; considering project support for research and building models for planting some temperate fruit trees (pears, apples...); solutions for handling the environment in household livestock farming; improving and enhancing the productivity and quality of buffalo and cow breeds; and supporting preliminary investigations and evaluations of the potential for forest carbon absorption and storage services in special-use and concentrated protection forests, etc./.

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