Homegardens in Southeast Asia are the unsung heroes of resilience to climate and market shocks. Researchers in Viet Nam have shown how to diversify and strengthen these ubiquitous systems.

Homegardens, which are common throughout Southeast Asia, are relatively small pieces of land around farm homes, ranging 400–7500 m2. Typically, these gardens feature a diverse range of annual and perennial species grown by the household for supplementary sources of food and income.

However, many homegardens are often not well managed or are being transformed into intensive monocultural systems, a process that has been underway for several decades. Monocultures generate income but few other benefits, with notable negative impact on environmental conditions and increased risk of food and income insecurity.

Researchers with the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) in Viet Nam have been working with farmers and agricultural extensionists to improve diversity of homegardens in the province of Ha Tinh in the northern part of central Viet Nam. Ha Tinh is one of the most vulnerable areas in the country to the impact of climate change and features some of the highest levels of poverty.

The Homegarden Improvement programme is part of a strategy to build the resilience of farmers to climatic and market fluctuations, carried out in collaboration with the district Farmers Union and the Ha Tinh Extension Centre, under a project, Support to Viet Nam for the Implementation of the Paris Agreement. The project is co-funded by the German Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety through its International Climate Initiative and by the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

While they might be relatively small in size, diversified homegardens have been shown to contribute to poverty alleviation (Sustainable Development Goal 1), food and nutrient security (SDG 2), healthy lives and wellbeing (SDG 3), gender equality and empowerment (SDG 5), sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12), climate-change mitigation (SDG 13), and reduced land degradation and biodiversity loss (SDG 15).

As part of the project, CIFOR-ICRAF have been introducing organic fruit-tree-based agroforestry through the Homegarden Improvement programme. ‘Homegarden’ in this case refers to mixes of trees, crops and vegetables in coherent systems along with the promotion of ‘circular’ agriculture through the management of household waste and crop residues for composting.

Based on evidence built up over decades of research in Viet Nam and elsewhere about the benefits of agroforestry systems, the project team worked with participating farmers to select fruit trees for growing in homegardens in combination with other crops. The selections were based on farmers’ preferences, the enabling policies in the district, and consultations with local governmental staff and a national fruit-tree expert.

Pomelo (Citrus maxima or Citrus grandis), jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), guava (Psidium guajava) and lychee (Litchi chinensis) were the most preferred species, followed by orange (Citrus sp), longan (Dimocarpus longan), sapote (Manilkara zapota) and lime (Citrus sp) with some requests for mango (Mangifera indica), coconut (Cocos nucifera) and persimmon (Diospyros sp).

Selecting trees is one thing; knowing how to manage them for optimal performance is another. Accordingly, the team conducted ‘training of trainers’ for 31 representatives from communes and district agencies in August and September 2021. From November 2020 through to March 2022, the team also provided 14 technical training courses for 560 farmers.

The training covered how to design and manage a productive and resilient homegarden with fruit trees, also known as agroforestry, with a particular focus on organic production.

Agroforestry systems that are typically found in homegardens throughout Southeast Asia have been shown to endure extremes of weather — droughts, floods, strong winds, cold spells — owing to the tree component being deep-rooted and stable, modifying the microclimate of the plot so that temperatures are more comfortable than on monocultural plots, and all components in the system providing a range of products throughout the year (fruits, nuts, leaves, flowers, fungi, seasonal crops like maize, fodder grasses for livestock, fish, chickens etcetera). Well-designed systems reduce or eliminate the need for chemical inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, which not only improves the health of the crops but also that of the farmers and the environment.

As well as training in such systems, farmers and technical staff visited two fruit-tree nurseries to learn how to judge the quality of seedlings against indicators of quality.

By April 2022, more than 2200 farm households had been provided with more than 50,000 seedlings. District and provincial technical staff, who had been trained by the project team, taught the farmers how to plant and care for the seedlings, with reference to technical guidance for organic fruit-tree production (for example, orange) and Standard designs for fruit-tree-based agroforestry systems on flat land and sloping land, publications that had been developed by the project team and a fruit-tree expert from the Fruit and Vegetable Research Institute.

A key part of the establishment and continuing management of diverse and healthy homegardens has been the deployment of probiotics in the production of compost. Probiotics are beneficial microorganisms, such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, which break down organic matter in the soil into usable material that plants can take up through their roots. The healthier the soil, the less need for synthetic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers as well as irrigation needs. Soil water holding capacity can be improved as result of increasing soil humus

The team delivered more than 6300 packages of probiotics to over 3000 households, all of whom reported to the Ha Tinh Farmers Union that they not only applied the probiotics they received for composting but also followed the technical guidelines distributed by the team to produce their own probiotics from rice bran, syrup etcetera.

Alongside these practices, the project team introduced mulching with crop residues and palm leaves; and management of good groundcover by growing Arachis pintoi, which is a nitrogen-fixing fodder plant, contributing to soil quality improvement and reducing direct soil evaporation and soil loss due to drought and heavy rain. They also explained the use of biological controls of pests and diseases, such as lime, insect traps, covering trees with nets and fruit with paper bags.

For reducing the impact of heavy rain, besides tree-based systems, the project also introduced the concept of contour planting, adding pineapple or Guinea grass along the contour lines or terrace borders for control of soil erosion and additional income or fodder for livestock.

The practices have been so successful that they are now formally integrated into the Ha Tinh Farmers Union’s 2022 plan and the Ha Tinh Extension Centre’s provincial digital transformation programme, meaning that more than 17,000 households will be able to gain access to the knowledge needed to improve their homegardens and, thus, their livelihoods and the environment.

‘The Ha Tinh Farmers Union is committed to supporting the twentieth criteria of the New Rural Development program in Ha Tinh Province,’ said Nguyen Mai Thuy, president of the Union. ‘The criteria are about promoting homegarden improvement and demonstrations of how to use homegardens effectively and sustainably. In 2022, Ha Tinh Farmers’ Union is promoting agroforestry for homegarden improvement associated with organic-oriented production, climate information services, climate-change adaptation, household income improvement, New Rural Development program. This effort will also contribute to reaching the target issued by the Prime Minister on planting 1 billion trees in Viet Nam during 2021–2025.’

The project, Support to Viet Nam for the Implementation of the Paris Agreement, is supported by the German Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) through the International Climate Initiative (IKI) and by the Government of Viet Nam. As part of the project, World Agroforestry (ICRAF) implements participatory, ecosystem-based, adaptation measures, such as climate-smart agriculture, with poor households and local partners, for climate-risk management in two exposed districts in Ha Tinh Province.

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