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Partners & Projects

Vietnam: On-Site Organic Waste Conversion Project

Project Date:

June 2021 – December 2025

Partners:

Vietnam Farmers’ Union (VNFU)

Background

Among the biggest sources of black carbon and methane emissions is the practice of burning agricultural and food waste. With proper management, this organic matter could be transformed into valuable resources like compost or insect protein.

Based in Vietnam, this project in partnership with the Vietnam Farmers’ Union (VNFU) aims to support sustainable waste management practices. Targeting waste from farms and the food chain, technical training was provided to rural communities. Workshops educated participants on how to use black soldier fly larvae and red worms to convert manure and food residues into insect protein for animals. Through fermentation, food waste could also be converted into animal feed. Composting using the deep litter method, which involves a large amount of bedding combined with chicken droppings, helped to accelerate the breakdown of organic matter into soil amendments.

Key Features:

The key aim of the initiative was to prevent and reduce the release of methane through widespread adoption of sustainable waste conversion technologies and solutions. As methane is a potent greenhouse gas that speeds up the rate of global heating, curbing emissions is a strategy to combat the climate crisis and its many impacts on human health and economies.
Aside from favourable environmental outcomes, the project sought to bring about benefits on the community-level, a goal that is aligned with EarthCare Foundation’s focus on sustainable livelihood development. Many of the solutions that were implemented had the effect of safeguarding the livelihoods of farmers. In Gai Lai province, for example, cattle fed with fermented feed from the trials gained more weight than those raised on commercially available feed. Similar economic advantages could be observed in Lam Dong province, where participating farmers saved VND 5 million within a month of replacing 30% of commercial feed with fermented feed.

Project Outcomes:

Over the course of this project, sustainable agricultural practices reached a new scale in Vietnam. Having successfully set up 1,428 additional trials, the total number of demonstrations reached 6,949. These trials were key to widen the scale and scope of four key sustainable agricultural techniques, enabling farmers to improve soil health, manage crop residue efficiently, and reduce dependence on chemical inputs.
Key to this success was the strong emphasis on knowledge and education, which unlocked rapid adoption of sustainable farming techniques across the agricultural community in Vietnam. Learning tours, which garnered 1,674 participants including farmer leaders and provincial officers, fostered greater peer learning and the exchange of best practices. Over time, this empowered farmers to accelerate the adoption of such techniques and further promoted these agricultural practices across the region.
Overall, Vietnamese farmers benefited from major reductions in fertiliser costs. Through introducing rice stubble management, the decomposition process helped to reduce fertiliser input costs by 25-30% across 165 new trial sites. These sites, located in Thanh Hoa Province, saw the participation of 330 farmer leaders in workshops hosted at Farmer Field Schools. As a result, the trials showcased the cost-effectiveness of environmentally friendly solutions for crop residue management.
By March 2024, 19,323 farming households had already adopted sustainable techniques to manage crop residues. Meanwhile, 8,768 households started using black soldier flies or red worms to convert livestock waste into animal feed or vermicompost. These solutions led to major reductions in operational costs for farmers, improving their bottom lines while also combating the environmental challenges associated with improper waste management.