5 August 2016, an award ceremony was held in light of the 7^th General Assembly of Asian Farmers' Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) at the Viet Nam Farmers’ Union building. This day, Jong Ha Bae, the Country Representative of Food and Agriculture Organization Viet Nam was honored with the “the Memorial Medal for Vietnamese Peasantry class development”. With the international members from the Asian Farmers' Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) in place, the medal was awarded for FAO’s contribution in improving the livelihoods of Vietnamese farmers.

“Viet Nam Farmers’ Union has been one of FAO’s major counterparts and throughout the joint activities, they have showed their professionalism with its structured and organized network, enabling a direct and effective support to a vast group of farmers in Viet Nam. Maintaining this good relationship, I look forward for a more fruitful and successful collaboration with the VNFU in the future” stated Jong Ha Bae. 

Working towards an improved sustainable management for farm and forest households with VNFU.

Viet Nam Farmers’ Union (VNFU) is a mass organization of farmers in Viet Nam organized in national, provincial, district and commune levels counting up to 10 080 636 members within the union. The union represents farmers in all sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fishery, salt making, handicraft, small rural industry services and other fields in rural areas.

Recognizing this strong potential to make a huge impact in poverty reduction and livelihood improvement at the grass-root level, FAO Viet Nam, in partnership with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is implementing the Forest and Farm Facility Program (FFF program) with the Viet Nam Farmers’ Union to improve the livelihoods and income of small scaled farms and forest households through ensuring the sustainable management of farms and forests.

During its three years of implementation, the FFF program in Vietnam, facilitated by the Vietnam Farmers’ Union will strengthen smallholder producer organizations for business and policy engagement, catalyze multi-sectoral stakeholder policy platforms at local and country level, and share experiences to regional and global programs. Also, it targets to encourage VNFU and FFPOs to participate in decision making process and policy formulation on the issue related to land and forest protection at a local, national and international level. 

Most recently, FAO conducted an intensive proposal writing training course for selected farmers to improve their writing and problem-solving skills to allow them to better understand and develop their projects. The course was also unique in a way as the farmers were not only new to grant-making and proposal writing processes, but also many had never used a computer, were poorly educated and unaccustomed to articulating problems and solutions. This will ultimately benefit the agricultural communities and build more ownership to their own projects for farmers.