Fruits and Vegetables in Vietnam - International Food Policy ...

In order to obtain a picture of the relative importance of each organization and the types of services
that they provide, Table 3-37 shows the percentage of respondents getting information from different
extension services. Most respondents received information from the Extension Services Department (63
percent) and that overall the majority of the advice was in the form of information on fertilizer use, pest
management and varietal selection (16.5 percent, 15.9 percent and 9.4 percent respectively), all from the
Extension Services Department. The other organizations and other types of services on offer played a largely
insignificant role in the provision of Extension Services.
Looking at the commodity-level results, growers of cabbages (19 percent), oranges (13.5 percent),
mangos (13.4 percent) and pineapples (13.4 percent) had the highest proportion of respondents receiving
extension services. The Extension Services Department provided most of its extension services to mango,
orange and cabbage producers. Cooperatives gave most advice to cucumber producers while the Farmer’s
Union was most active in providing extension advice to cabbage producers.
In terms of the type of service provided to commodity groups, cabbage producers (21.4 percent) and
pineapple producers (16.8 percent) obtained most of the advice about varietal selection. Cabbage producers
also obtained most of the advice about irrigation techniques (40 percent of respondents) while pineapple and
orange producers obtained most of the advice about propagation techniques (33 percent and 30.5 percent
respectively). mango producers were interested in the majority of the information about fertilizer use and
pest management (21 percent of respondents). Finally, pineapple producers were most interested in
information about marketing (42 percent of respondents).
9.2 Extension Organizations and Contact with Producers
While the majority of producers had received extension services from the Extension Services
Department, the number of visits to producers from each organization is also an important determinant of
extension impact. It is interesting to note that despite the numbers of producers receiving visits from the
Extension Services Department, the number of times each producer was visited (an average of 1.29 visits)
was low compared with other organizations. NGO’s, despite only visiting 6 respondents, had the highest
number of repeat visits, at an average of 3.3 visits per farmer. On average, each of the 146 respondents
visited by Cooperatives was visited 2.6 times, and the 79 producers visited by the Gardening Association
were visited 2.7 times on average. Visits by producers to outside events arranged by the extension
organizations were not as numerous as visits by organizations to producers. The highest number of visits by
producers to outside events was an average of 1.4 visits to event organized by Cooperatives. This compares
with an average of 0.22 visits by producers to events organized by the Extension Service Department.
Visits to producers by extension organizations were for a variety of purposes. The majority of visits
to producers were for irrigation extension services (an average of 2.59 visits). This was closely followed by
visits for propagation services (an average of 2.45 visits) and post-harvest disease control (an average of 2.2
visits). Off-farm visits were particularly low; the highest average number of visits being for propagation
techniques and on-farm demonstrations (0.55 and 0.52 visits respectively).
Chapter 3. Commercial growers of fruits and vegetables Page 3-24