Rapid adoption of “Three Reductions” in An Giang province, Vietnam

Contributed by:

N.H. Huan, Vice Director General, Plant Protection Department, Ho Chi Minh City
N.H. An, Director, Sub Plant Protection Department, An Giang province, Vietnam
D.N Pha, Vice Director, Department of Agriculture, An Giang province, Vietnam
M. M. Escalada, Visayas State University, Leyte, Philippines
K.L. Heong, International Rice Research Institute, Los Baños, Philippines

Three Reductions, Three Gains billboard

The Three Reductions, Three Gains (in Vietnamese, Ba Giam, Ba Tang (3G3T)) campaign was developed by an international cooperation between the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Visayas State University (VSU) in the Philippines and Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).  Using a multi stakeholder participatory process, 3B3T was designed to “distill” technical information into simple decision rules and through mass media, motivate thousands of rice farmers to modify their attitudes and practices in managing their input resources, seeds, fertilizers and insecticides. Details are described here.

The first 3G3T campaign was launched in 2003 in two provinces, Can Tho and Tien Giang and it helped reduce farmers’ seed, fertilizer and insecticide use by 10%, 7% and 30%, respectively. An Giang province started experimenting with 3G3T in 2001 using farmer participatory experiments (Huan et al 2005).  In 2003, An Giang province launched its own campaign, distributing 200,000 leaflets, 12,000 posters and 31 billboards (Photo above) to motivate farmers and this has resulted in about 85% adoption (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Area in total area and % of area adopting 3R3G

Most of this can be attributed to increase in yields which was 5.3 t/ha in 2003 and 6.3 t/ha in 2008, with reduced use of seeds (- 94 kg/ha), urea (- 25 kg/ha) and insecticides (- 2 to 3 sprays). Farmers in general earned about US$ 130/ha more in 2008 than they did in 2003, partially due to increase rice prices, but a large proportion due to decrease in input use. To reduce seeds, farmers have rapidly adopted the use of drum seeders, from negligible numbers to more than 13,000 units in 2008.

Figure 2: Annual rice production in An Giang (2000-2007)

The adoption curve in Figure 1 is typically sigmoid with rapid increase rate (4% in 2004 to 52% in 2005), about 2 years after launching. This is probably due to the support from both the central and provincial governments. In support of 3G3T the An Giang provincial government had between 2003 and 2008 allocated about US$ 1.5 million (US$ 0.3 million/year). The funds supported 1,031 training sessions, 827 demo plots and numerous farmer contests.