Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to estimate a recent trend in climate change and its impact on livelihood of community living in Nam Dinh province, Vietnam. Further, it aims to increase the government attention for adaptation measures by providing awareness of climate change and its negative impacts on livelihood. Design/methodology/approach: For study purpose, cross-sectional and secondary data sets were used. The community perceptions about climate change were recorded by face-to-face interviews of 500 respondents from Nam Dinh province, Vietnam in April 2015 by using a well-structured questionnaire, whereas secondary data were collected from the statistical yearbook of General Statistics Office of Vietnam. To accomplish the study objectives, Cobb–Douglas production function and Likert scale were used to estimate the community perceptions of climate change and impact of climate change on livelihood, respectively. Findings: Results depict that climate change negatively impacted on the productivity of rice and livestock. Particularly, frequently occurring of droughts, floods and salinity intrusion negatively impacted on rice productivity, while livestock productivity is decreased by frequent occurring of flood storms in study area. Originality/value: The study results suggest a government support is essential to achieve sustainable livelihoods for coastal communities living in the Red River Delta, particularly some adaptation measures in the context of climate change are required in study area.

Sustainable food production is an important foundation for a country’s development. With the accelerated pace of China’s economic development, many farmers are relocating to cities. This change in farmers’ part-time employment may lead to a shortage of agricultural labor supply and can result in insufficient food production. Therefore, the government implemented grain subsidies to promote food production. This study investigates the impact of grain subsidies on the labor supply of farm households, using panel data from fixed observations in rural China. The results show that grain subsidies increase the agricultural labor time of incompletely divided part-time farmers, especially the time spent growing food. This increase is because the members of these households are more likely to be engaged in temporary-seasonal-nonfarm work, and they can switch between nonfarm and agricultural work more easily. Moreover, this study finds that as the total amount of subsidies received by farmers increases, the effect of per-unit subsidies becomes more pronounced. These findings may provide evidence of subsidy effects and present policy implications for ensuring adequate food supply and sustainable agricultural development in the future.