Catfish Value Chains in MRB

Food Loss in the Catfish Value Chain in MRB

The ACIAR/IDRC Food Loss Program

This project forms part of the newly created Food Loss Program which is a partnership between ACIAR and IDRC. There are four full projects and a fifth SRA project that are geographically dispersed but each addressing aspects of the problem of food loss as it relates to their country’s context. The alliance between ACIAR and IDRC aims to support strategic agricultural research that will have a potentially transformative impact on food security into the foreseeable future. The first phase of this program used interdisciplinary expertise to identify the major challenges, critical breakthroughs and new opportunities that will influence the future of food (as detailed in The Future of Food Impact Roadmap report (XPrize 2020)). The second phase of this program is to design and commission strategic and innovative research projects to respond to challenges that impact smallholder farmers in developing counties. To that end the Food Loss Program has been developed. This involved a stage 1 ideas generation process where research teams were asked to address food loss issues in partner country value chains. This project was one of the five applications selected to proceed to stage 2 (full project development).

A brief history

What ACIAR/IDRC requested

The research teams were asked to include the following elements in their stage 1 application:

1. A quantification of food loss in food systems at a provincial or local level for at least one agricultural value chain in a minimum of two countries. This may involve mapping the current stakeholders (including private agri-businesses) from the farmers (at harvest/slaughter) through to consumers and documenting the types and amounts of food loss that occur along the chain.

2. A foresighting exercise to explore how these value chains are likely to change given future trends in farm labour, climate change, urban and rural populations’ diet, and other factors and what impact these changes may have on total food loss from the value chain.

3. An assessment of the factors that enable or prevent the transferring of interventions from one location to another to provide practical solutions for reducing food loss in the value chain. This may involve social/political/economic research on how likely the intervention is to be integrated into the new value chain successfully, and/or some pilot testing of hard technological solutions in new locations.

Throughout the design and implementation of the research project, the teams must seek to engage private agri-businesses along the value chain to firstly document the food loss situation they are experiencing, and secondly to explore models for how innovations to reduce food loss can be sustained over the long-term. In this respect it is noteworthy that reducing food loss at one point in the value chain may involve interventions at other points along the chain. Because food loss impacts are likely to exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, an understanding of gender issues in the value chains was also considered a high priority.

In addition to these technical requirements ACIAR/IDRC requested that project ideas be led by the researchers and organisations in our partner countries and facilitate south-south collaboration as much as possible. Valuable technical support is being provided by researchers based in Australia, however the proposal development is being led and directed predominately from the partner countries’ perspective.

Our project Food loss in the Catfish (Pangasius) Value Chain of the Mekong River Basin: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos was selected based on the content of the initial Concept Note.

Catfish by-products

Project timelines

May 2021 ACIAR/IRDC accepted “Food loss in the Catfish (Pangasius) Value Chain of the Mekong River Basin” proposal

July-Dec 2021 MOUs signed between Australian government and SE Asian governments of Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao PDR

Dec-Jan 2021/2022 Project Inception

Jan- Dec 2022 Year 1: Literature review, current status, Agribusiness Master Class, Foresighting, Solution Space, gender inclusion & MEL development

Jan- Dec 2023 Year 2: Value chain assessments integrating Foresighting scenarios, Solutions Spaces with a focus on gender.

Jan- Dec 2024 Year 3: Formulate and test solutions/innovations, assess effectiveness and probability of success of interventions.

Outputs to date

Proposal & budget completed
Factsheet completed
Ethics application submitted to UNE Human Ethics Committee
Dropbox storage allocated

Research Institutions involved

Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) Australia - funding

International Development Research Centre (IRDC), Canada - funding

Health and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (HAPRI), University of Economics HCM City, Vietnam

Faculty of Agriculture, National University of Laos (NUOL), Laos

Agriculture and Food Business Incubation Center (AFBIC) at Division of Research and Extension (DRE), Royal University of Agriculture (RUA), Cambodia

Crawford School of Public Policy, the Australian National University (ANU)

Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology

University of Adelaide (AU)

University of New England (UNE)

University of the Sunshine Coast (USC)

Caption for a recent accomplishment

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