The fourth Humidtropics Platform in the Mekong region was launched on September 24 in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, China. Fifty stakeholders attended from government, research, business and NGO sectors. Two thirds of the participants were local, and the remainder came from Yunnan or National level organisations. Xishuangbanna is famous within China for biodiversity and cultural diversity: it covers 0.2% of China’s land area, but harbors 16% of China’s plant species, 22% of mammals, and 36% of birds. There are eight distinct major ethnic groups with separate languages, and many … [Read more...]
Maize, Pigs, Plums and Tea – Linking Smallholder Farmers to Markets in Northwest Vietnam
One of the key recommendations emerging from a situational analysis conducted by Humidtropics in four provinces of Northwest Vietnam is to use existing success stories of marketing business models to replicate those within value chains for indigenous local foods targeting niche markets. As a result, Humidtropics scientists from ILRI partnered with the Agriculture Economics and Value Chains Department of the Centre for Agrarian Systems Research and Development (CASRAD) to conduct a value chain assessment on four agricultural products: maize, pigs, plums and tea. This assessment provided … [Read more...]