Production and marketing constraints of dairy farmers in Son La milk value chain, Vietnam

Rural livelihood augmentation has long been a crucial challenge for the effectiveness of Vietnamese government policies in agricultural sector. Despite the amazing fact that farmers’ participation in the dairy value chain has promised the better outcome, there are still millions of rural farmer households struggling against the inefficient production and marketing, and decline with hope of improving their main source of income. Plus the extreme price volatility and the market power of downstream actors, rural dairy farmers with small-scale production have verged to the edge of selling up the whole supply chain. This paper attempted to analyze the production and marketing constraints faced by the local dairy farmers in the milk value chain of Northern mountainous Sonla provinces of Vietnam. The Pearson’s chi-square test was employed to assess the statistical significance of farmer’s responses across the study sites. The results of the study revealed farmers produce and different marketing different qualities of milk to two main buyers under the constraints of high input prices, feed scarcity, exploitation by downstream actors, capital investment inadequacy, inadequate poor market information and knowledge, lack of technical support from dairy manufacturer and local authority, land limit, and cow diseases.