Sustainable Animal and Aquatic Foods (SAAF) program in Vietnam aims for unified pathway for livestock transformation in Son La and Thai Nguyen

Vietnam's livestock sector is growing rapidly, with farmers, cooperatives, consumers, and policymakers striving to deliver safer, high-quality animal-sourced foods. Yet the sector faces significant challenges including climate change, animal diseases, fragmented market systems, and environmental pressures. At the same time, livestock offers opportunities to improve rural livelihoods, nutrition, and resilience particularly for ethnic minorities and rural women that have fewer alternative income options.

To address these challenges, CGIAR recently launched the Sustainable Animal and Aquatic Foods (SAAF) science program in Vietnam. Karen Marshall, interim deputy director of SAAF, explained: "The SAAF program aims to scale sustainable models that deliver both economic benefits and healthier, more resilient communities to ensure food security."

In August 2025, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) convened two co-design workshops with local partners and stakeholders in Son La (21 August) and Thai Nguyen (27-28 August) to shape the program's direction and priorities.

Co-design workshops in Son La Province (left) on 21 August 2025 and Thai Nguyen Province (right) on 27-28 August 2025 (photo credit: ILRI/Duy Vu and Chi Nguyen).

From pilots to one integrated program

SAAF brings together lessons from two earlier CGIAR initiatives (2022-2024) - the Sustainable Animal Productivity (SAPLING) in Son La Province and the One Health Initiative in Thai Nguyen Province. SAPLING demonstrated how participatory approaches could improve livestock productivity while the One Health Initiative showed the importance of addressing food safety, antimicrobial resistance, and zoonotic diseases across livestock value chains and in ways that respond to the needs of everyone across gender, age, and ethnicity. By merging these efforts, SAAF offers an integrated framework linking productivity, disease control, food safety, social equity and environmental health, and embeds these in market system innovations that sustain uptake of appropriate practices.

Nguyen Viet Hung, regional director of ILRI Asia, emphasized that "SAAF will scale innovations from both SAPLING and the One Health initiatives. By co-designing with provincial partners to ensure solutions are not just scientifically relevant but also meet the local needs and are jointly owned by communities."

Shared challenges, complementary strengths

Across both provinces, discussions revealed common challenges such as fragmented smallholder systems, weak adoption of biosecurity and VietGAPpractices, disease risks, and limited market access with some variations across gender and ethnic groups.

However, Son La and Thai Nguyen also have unique strengths. Son La's natural conditions, large areas for growing forages, and indigenous breeds make it suitable for cattle, buffalo and pig value chains development. Thai Nguyen, in contrast, benefits from strong institutions and experience in circular agriculture models.

Tran Dung Tien, deputy director of the Son La Department of Agriculture and Environment (DAE), shares insights on the livestock situation in Son La Province (Photo credit: ILRI/Chi Nguyen).

Tran Dung Tien, deputy director of the Son La Department of Agriculture and Environment (DAE), explained: "Livestock has already created jobs and income for tens of thousands of households in Son La. But production remains small-scale and scattered, and climate and terrain pose real constraints. With SAAF, we hope to develop more concentrated models, stronger links with the market, and higher-quality branded products."

Nguyen Quoc Huy, deputy director of the Sub-Department of Animal Husbandry, Veterinary, and Fisheries (Sub-DAH), speaks on the challenges of disease management in Thai Nguyen (ILRI/Chi Nguyen).

In Thai Nguyen, disease management remains a top priority. Nguyen Quoc Huy, deputy director of the Sub-Department of Animal Husbandry, Veterinary, and Fisheries (Sub-DAH), noted: "African swine fever continues to threaten our farmers, and environmental management is still weak. We look forward to CGIAR's support in technology transfer, training, and policy support so we can shift towards modern, climate-resilient, and competitive livestock systems."

A shared vision for livestock transformation

Despite context differences, both provinces have a common vision for the SAAF program: Transforming livestock into a vital economic sector: modern, environmentally sustainable, and capable of producing safe, high-quality branded products that are competitive in the market, fostering gender equality and youth participation, and enhancing social welfare and public health.

Co-designing solutions with local partners

A group discussion session at the co-design workshop in Son La Province (photo credit: ILRI/Duy Vu).

At both workshops, government officials, veterinary officers, farmers, women's and youth representatives, universities, traders, feed companies, and processors identified several joint priorities:

• Improving productivity and profitability through better breeding, cost-effective feeding, and animal health services.
• Strengthening disease prevention and control
• Enhancing value chain coordination and market access to strengthen supply of branded, and high-quality products.
• Promoting sustainable practices such as biosecurity, VietGAP certification, circular agriculture, and digital tools.
• Ensuring inclusivity by fostering gender equality, youth participation, and equitable access to finance and capacity development.
• Integrating One Health approaches to safeguard food safety and public health.

As one cooperative leader in Thai Nguyen noted: "Farmers need more than just technical advice. We need stable buyers and fair contracts to sell safe products. With these, households will be willing to invest in better practices."

Phan Thi Hong Phuc, vice rector of Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry (TUAF), underlined the importance of integration: "In addition to strengthening the long-standing One Health work in Thai Nguyen, SAAF needs to more fully integrate productivity, environment, markets, and value chains to meet the demands of local livestock systems and public health." Her hope is that "SAAF will broaden its scope of support and mobilize more local resources, especially in developing livestock value chains that generate high-value, competitive products, which will increase household incomes and foster sustainable socio-economic development in the province."

Read more:

https://van.nongnghiepmoitruong.vn/cgiar-launches-sustainable-animal-and-aquatic-foods-program-d769707.html

https://van.nongnghiepmoitruong.vn/cgiars-saaf-program-promotes-sustainable-livestock-farming-d771682.html

https://vietnamnews.vn/society/1724896/farmers-helped-to-promote-sustainable-livestock-development.html