AVERP holds its 1st interim prize award ceremony Summer Crop 2017
The AVERP project donor AgResults announced the first beneficiaries of the AVERP project fund. Nine out of the eleven enterprises who participated in the first cropping season of the project, successfully increased rice yields while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
These nine participants received an award, as part of the total prize money of US$55,000, proportional to their achieved results. Overall, the nine implemented technologies resulted in an average yield inrease of 26% and greenhouse gas emission reductions of 12.5% against baseline practices.
The AVERP project incentivises enterprises including rice producers, fertiliser producers, and input suppliers, to test and scale improved rice growing technologies that increase yields and decrease greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional rice production methods.
In the first six months of the project that covered one crop season, eleven selected implementers tested improved rice growing technologies in field conditions. SNV, as project manager, Applied Geo-Solutions Company and Institute of Agricultural Environment, as project verifiers, collected data on data on crop agronomic development and greenhouse gas emissions in close collaboration with the Crop Production Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Extension Centre of Thai Binh.
All collected data was analysed to calculate rice yields and greenhouse gas emissions against a baseline of traditional management practices.
The Crop Production Department and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Thai Binh represented by the Agricultural Extension Center are both active partners in the AVERP project. Dr. Nguyen Hong Son, General Director of CPD said “The first results are promising despite a difficult growing season, and we expect even better results in Spring when implementers can better control conditions.”
The AgResults Vietnam GHG Emissions Reduction Pilot is a four-year, US$8 million results based financing project that aims to test and scale up innovative technologies, tools, and approaches to reduce GHG emissions while increasing yields in rice cultivation. The Pilot is operating in Thai Binh province in the Red River Delta, and will award prizes to those actors who are successful in testing and scaling technologies across two phases. The Pilot is managed by SNV Vietnam.
The AVERP project is conducted in two phases. Phase I will take place over two rice cropping seasons during which accepted organisations are testing their technologies. The first cropping season started in Summer 2017. The second and final cropping season of phase I begins in February 2018, and will culminate with grand prizes for cumulative results over both phase I cropping seasons.
Phase II, which will begin in Spring 2019, consists of four consecutive cropping seasons during which organisations who have proven their technology in Phase I will scale that technology to the greatest number of smallholder farmers. Both Phases include interim and grand prizes.