Abstract

Started in Viet Nam in 2003 and was piloted in small areas via the demonstration fields in four provinces in northern Viet Nam, Systematic Rice Intensification (SRI) has proven its agronomic, economic, and environmental benefits and thus has been promoted widely in Viet Nam for almost two decades to almost 50 rice production landscapes that helped to improve livelihood for more than one million of smallholder farmers; reduced water irrigation by 40%; production cost of 32% and increased yield by 13-29% as compared to the conventional practices during the period of 2010- 2015. Viet Nam has been recognized as the world’s third largest rice exporter (Department Crop Production of Vietnam, 2021), given almost 80% of agricultural land for rice cultivation (IRRI Online) and mobilization of advanced farming practices among other efforts. Overtime, key principles of SRI have been further developed and refined to be ecological-based suitable and enhance multi-dimensions efficacy. Mobilizing the combination of both literature review and primary data, this paper reviews the key milestones and results of SRI over the past two decades in VN; and makes a systematic review of the transition from SRI to System Crop Intensification (SCI) that are more relevant and pragmatic to the rice farming practices in different eco-systems and market needs in Viet Nam. A case study of the AgResults Vietnam Emissions Reduction Challenges Project (AVERP) showcases the sophisticated and innovative development of key principles of SRI to ecological and market-based SCI for sustainable and low carbon rice cultivation as well as the readiness of the roles of private sector in technology transferring and scaling those SCI to almost 48,000 smallholder rice farmers of 89 Co-ops over four (04) cropping season in Thai Binh province of Viet Nam.