Southeast Asia’s first Bayer ForwardFarm launched in Vietnam

ForwardFarm Can Tho brings together farmers, technology partners, scientists and academia, value chain partners, as well as consumers, to exchange agricultural know-how and form partnerships to promote modern and climate-smart sustainable agriculture through first-hand experience.

In collaboration with farmers and other partners, the Bayer ForwardFarming initiative enables knowledge sharing about modern and sustainable agriculture through first-hand experiences on independent farms worldwide.

Following the overarching concept, the ForwardFarming initiative will support sustainability in agriculture across three areas: caring for crops with tailored solutions for farmers via the Much More Rice integrated program, caring for the planet and people with proactive stewardship to protect health, safety, and environment responsibly, and caring for partnerships with value chain partners to bring holistic solutions to farmers.

The three-year program aims to improve farmers' incomes, ensure food security, and preserve natural resources and the environment. There are additional goals of enhancing practices to reduce water use and greenhouse gas emissions, and adapting to climate change. This complements MARD’s vision to sustainably develop one million hectares of high-quality rice for export and promote green growth in the Mekong Delta rice cultivation area.

“Today’s agriculture is faced with numerous challenges: the increasing demand for food because of the continuously growing world population, the decline in available arable land, limited natural resources and climate change. At Bayer we are convinced that the answer lies in an integrated concept for sustainable agriculture that considers several economical, ecological, and societal criteria. Bayer ForwardFarming is a knowledge platform for sustainable agricultural practices, designed to further stimulate the dialog within the industry and beyond,” said Tomas Zaborowski, Bayer Global Head of Sustainability Excellence.

The establishment of the ForwardFarm Can Tho is the result of a Memorandum of Understanding signed between Bayer Vietnam and the NAEC in August 2022 to collaborate, transform rice cultivation in Vietnam by improving productivity and quality for exports, and promote sustainable agricultural development, including climate mitigation.

Bayer has currently a network of 26 ForwardFarms in 13 countries around the globe and Vietnam is the 14th country and the first in Southeast Asia.

The company has implemented this initiative in Vietnam to serve the value for smallholder farmers under the agreement with the government and through the partnership with key industry stakeholders in the value chain. The tailored solutions, modern tools and practices, proactive stewardship measures and partnerships under the ForwardFarming initiative will enable farmers to enhance productivity, quality and yields and in a way that preserves the environment.

“Partnerships are essential to stimulate progress in sustainable agriculture. This is being demonstrated by the partners of the ForwardFarming initiative via the collaboration programs and the joint training activities to enhance the capacity of farmers to produce sustainable rice towards emissions reductions, climate change adaptations, and smart rice farming,” said Dr. Le Quoc Thanh, director general of the NAEC. “As capacity building for farmers is crucial to achieve the sustainability goals, we target to outreach more than one hundred thousand farmers for dissemination of sustainable farming practices via the national agriculture extension network on both off-line and online training platforms.”

In the plains of the Mekong River, rice has been cultivated for centuries as an essential staple food for the people of Vietnam and many parts of the world.

Do Tri Hung is a smallholder farmer in Can Tho, who has joined the ForwardFarming initiative, said: “In recent years, we have faced many unpredictable challenges related to pests, diseases, and climate change in our local farming areas. I highly appreciate the collaboration via this Bayer ForwardFarming initiative to help us manage the challenges of sustainable farming with a broad range of innovative solutions tailored to our local farming practices.”

Stacy Markovich, Country Division Head of Bayer Southeast Asia and Pakistan, said: “Through a deep understanding and close collaboration with local smallholder farmers, we aim to create lasting partnerships via the ForwardFarming initiative providing farmers with access to training, agronomic know-how and solutions to improve farming incomes. We are also committed to sustainability including the adoption of holistic regenerative farming practices to strengthen farmers’ livelihoods while also conserving natural resources.”

Before the official inauguration of the ForwardFarm Can Tho, Bayer Vietnam and NAEC have jointly conducted Train-the-Trainer and Train-the-Farmer sessions for two thousand local farmers on sustainable farming practices as part of the capacity building programs in the local farmer network of the project. These activities also include highlighting the key role of women in the success of agriculture and knowledge sharing on enhanced community’s health.