Vietnam plays an important role in bearing global food security. However, Vietnamese rice farmers face several challenges, including pressures to develop sustainable livelihoods while reducing the environmental impacts of their production activities. Various Vietnamese agricultural restructuring policies were promulgated to promote the adoption of environmentally friendly practices to generate high value added for rice farmers, but the farmers are reluctant to adopt them because of perceived lack of demand. Decreasing consumption of rice in Asia and increasing demands in Europe shaped Vietnamese rice exporting policies. New trade agreements, such as the UK–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, offer new target markets for Vietnamese rice farmers. This research provides empirical evidence related to the preferences of UK consumers for ethical attributes for floating rice imported from Vietnam. Floating rice represents a traditional method of rice cultivation that relies on the natural flooding cycle. Its cultivation uses very few agrochemical inputs and provides several other environmental, economic, and social benefits. In an online survey, the study used a choice experiment that asked 306 UK consumers to report their preferences for one kilo of floating rice with three non-market attributes: reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, allocation of profits to the farmers, and restitution of biodiversity. Overall, study participants favored the attributes of floating rice, but reported utility for only the “fair trade” attribute and for a marginal willingness to pay premiums for profit allocations to farmers. Consumers did not find value in either CO₂ emission reduction or biodiversity improvement. Results from the study provide recommendations to develop agricultural programs, distribution strategies, and informational methods to encourage floating rice consumption in the UK.

“One Commune One Product” (OCOP) is a national target program intended to develop the rural economy of Vietnam. The goal of the OCOP program is to identify and promote competitive, marketable products that originate from local and indigenous resources. Since its nationwide implementation in 2018, nearly 5000 OCOP products have been evaluated and certified for OCOP status. The present study interviewed 600 Vietnamese consumers and employed the latent class choice model to investigate the consumers' willingness to pay for OCOP attributes, including the ethical attributes of traceability information, local production, and fair trade, along with the government “star rating” for the product and the OCOP certification label. Through a choice experiment, we identified two distinct consumer segments, one of which (about 74% of the sample) expressed preference and willingness to pay price premiums for the product attributes and the other which (about 26%) was unwilling to pay for any of the attributes. We also found that the consumers in the “Optimist” segment were willing to pay a price premium for “private” product attributes compared to “public” attributes. Consumers in the “Opponent” segment were characterized as highly price sensitive; they expressed lower levels of concern for the environment and lower preferences for local products. Based on these results, we propose some policy implications for continued development of the OCOP program and local livelihoods.

The conversion from black tiger shrimp farming and crop farming to white leg shrimp production is widespread in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta provinces. However, this conversion trend also contains many risks related to the technical aspects of the production process. The study mainly aims to estimate the technical efficiency of white leg shrimp farming. It also compares the technical efficiency of white leg shrimp farming between the traditional group that historically has cultivated white leg shrimp and the group that recently converted from black tiger shrimp and crops to white leg shrimp, in order to evaluate the efficiency and adaptability of shrimp farming. Primary data were collected by directly interviewing 99 farmers in traditional areas and 101 farmers in recently converted areas in the study sites and analyzed by using the stochastic frontier method. The calculated technical efficiency was around 72.9 percent, suggesting that farmers could increase their output level by about 27.1%, given constant inputs. There was no difference in the technical efficiency of the two groups, indicating that the converted farms have sufficient adaptability when switching to white leg shrimp farming. The output loss in farmers’ production is still very high, with an average loss of 1973 kg/hectare.