Rikolto in Vietnam (previously VECO Vietnam) is a member of Rikolto, an international NGO with its International Office in Leuven, Belgium.
About Us
Rikolto: a nimble network organisation
Rikolto is an international NGO with more than 40 years of experience in partnering with farmer organisations and food chain actors across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Rikolto runs programmes in 14 countries worldwide through eight regional offices. We’re a close-knit network of accessible and knowledgeable colleagues, willing to share experience and eager to inspire others.
Our history
Rikolto (previously going by the name Vredeseilanden in Belgium) is the result of the 2001 merger of three Belgian development organizations: Vredeseilanden, FADO and COOPIBO. Each brought their own experiences, expertise, resources and geographical specializations to the table, and together they decided to continue under the name Vredeseilanden.
Through FADO, one of the three original organizations, Rikolto has more than 20 years' experience working in Vietnam. FADO had been active in Vietnam since 1994, mainly in the fields of mangrove reforestation, providing microcredits and agriculture. Rikolto in Vietnam has worked in a wide variety of sectors and provinces, but always with a primary focus on promoting farmers’ food security and on supporting the sustainable development of specific agricultural chains.
For more information, visit Rikolto International's website page dedicated to the history of our organisation.
What will we eat tomorrow?
The incredible variety of food on our plates is not to be taken for granted. To keep up with the ever-growing world population in a changing climate, the food sector needs more stable supply chains to provide affordable food for all, today and tomorrow.
This challenge is critical:
By 2050, the global population is projected to exceed 9.6 billion. Global food production will need to increase by 50 percent to meet this challenge, which will be particularly acute in rapidly expanding urban areas.
Soil quality and water resources are already depleting and the impact of climate change is further aggravating this development.
Low prices and poverty are forcing farmers from the land and young people are turning their backs on a future in agriculture.
Rikolto believes family farms are a big part of the solution. Together they produce 70% of our food worldwide, but individually they're often cut out of the trade, ending up in poverty and leaving their huge potential untapped. Change on a global scale demands that food markets become more inclusive and offer value to all actors in the food chain. Smallholder farmers must be offered a fair deal.
Rikolto is ready to meet this challenge…
We empower farmer groups to become solid business partners and implement future-proof, sustainable practices. We support them so that their products meet quality standards. We connect them with innovators in the food industry to explore new ways of doing business.
... to change the recipe of our food system forever
Rikolto builds bridges of trust and trade, between the food industry, governments, research institutions, banks and farmer organisations around this one central question: ‘What will we eat tomorrow?’. We plant and harvest new solutions, making the food system more transparent, so consumers are able to make a sustainable choice.
Our mission
Rikolto envisions a world with production and consumption systems that allow poverty and hunger to be eradicated and that do not burden our planet more than it can bear. Therefore, Rikolto enables and supports smallholder farmers to take up their role in rural poverty alleviation and to contribute to feeding a growing world population in a sustainable way.
In 2017, Rikolto in Vietnam started a 5-year programme named “Supporting Inclusive and Sustainable Agricultural Value Chain Development Benefitting Smallholder Farmers in Vietnam”.
Our specific objective is that “Fruits and vegetables, rice, and tea in Vietnam are produced in safe and sustainable ways and marketed through viable, competitive and efficient chains benefitting smallholder producers.”
Our priorities
In order to do so, we aim to contribute to what we call structural change agendas or changes at the structural level that can have a wide-ranging impact. For the programme 2017-2021, our interventions will focus on two priorities:
- The promotion of sustainable and safe food policies tackling safe vegetables production, consumption and marketing that benefit smallholder farmers;
- The mainstreaming of inclusive business models and practices for sustainable rice across the Vietnamese rice subsector.
In addition, Rikolto in Vietnam is the National Coordinator for Vietnam of the project “Mainstreaming Sustainable Management of Tea Production Landscapes” managed by Rainforest Alliance and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF/UNEP). The project is running from December 2015 to April 2018.
