The Participatory Agricultural Extension Programme funded by VVOB, a Belgian non-profit (www.vvob.be/vietnam/), is implemented in three provinces of the Mekong Delta (An Giang, Hau Giang and Soc Trang) and two provinces in South-East Vietnam (Ba Ria, Vung Tau and Binh Phuoc).
these five provinces VVOB collaborates with the Agricultural Extension Centre (AEC), Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD), Women’s unions (WU) and Farmers’ Associations (FA) to promote participatory methods in agricultural extension.
In line with the national policy PAEX contributes to an extension system that addresses the needs of the farmers. Farmers and extension personnel need skills to facilitate the development of an extension system based on real needs.
In addition to key participatory extension methodologies, i.e Participatory Rural Appraisal, Participatory Technology Development, Participatory Farmer Club Operation and Management, the Programme introduced basic marketing concepts.
In November 2011 a 3 day training workshop on marketing of agricultural products for core-Agricultural Extension trainers (ToT) covered following contents:
- Module 1: Marketing concept (Marketing, agricultural marketing, value chain)
- Module 2: Marketing approach skills (market segmentation, customer behavior, product, branding, marketing plans)
- Module 3: Negotiation skills and price
- Module 4: Analysis of a case study of the Vinh Tranh rice variety production co-operative
Based on above training contents and additional input by ToT core trainers, a marketing concept book has been developed consisting of training modules each containing a main training session, additional background documents, references and case studies.
This book was developed thanks to the national consultant for this workshop Dr. Ho Cao Viet, main author of this book, and thanks to the contributions of ToT core trainers of five provinces to the marketing training course.
We gratefully acknowledge the strong support of Directory Boards of DARDs and AECs. Their constant cooperation will be necessary to ensure that this marketing knowledge can be further disseminated to relevant stakeholders.
We hope and believe this book will be help the ToT core trainers to convey their knowledge to other trainers, extension workers and farmer clubs and that also extension workers, farmer clubs, mass organization members will find this book useful.
