This paper provides a comparative assessment of the productive efficiency of three common coffee growing systems in Vietnam: mono-cropping, synchronization and segregation. Results from an input distance function approach deliver several important findings. First, the average inefficiency level is estimated to be around 18% although inefficiency varies significantly between the three farming systems.

Increasing urbanization and industrial development upstream of the Mekong River Delta of Vietnam (MRD) including the construction of a series of dams for hydroelectricity generation is changing the downstream risk of flooding. Concerns about the likely influence of global climate change and rising sea levels add further uncertainty to this risk that threatens the livelihood of farmers.

We obtain rich measures of the risk preferences of a sample of Vietnamese farmers, and revisit the link between risk preferences and economic well-being. Far from being particularly risk averse, our farmers are on average risk neutral and, thus, more risk tolerant than typical Western subject populations. This generalises recent findings indicating that students in poorer countries are more risk tolerant than students in richer countries to a general population sample. Risk aversion is, furthermore, negatively correlated with income within our sample, but does not correlate with wealth.

There is a belief that sustainability-certified coffee production helps increase economic benefits to farmers and reduces negative environmental impacts. However, the international empirical evidence is not conclusive. Also, there is a lack of empirical evidence for Vietnam - the world's second-largest coffee producing country. This paper provides the first empirical examination of the differences in eco-efficiency between conventional and sustainability-certified coffee-growing farms in Vietnam. Data of 726 farms in Vietnam over three crop years from 2012/13 to 2014/15 are analysed.

This paper aims to review empirical studies regarding factors influencing farmers’ adaptation to climate change and document those factors in a systematic manner. Adaptation to climate change is an important research topic, especially in agriculture, a sector reliant on climate-sensitive resources. Several studies have examined the adaptation issues and identified factors that influence the adaptive responses of farmers in specific contexts or regions. However, little research effort has been paid to collecting and categorizing those factors.

Increasing consumer awareness on sustainable and healthy food choices has given rise to a growing demand for organic tea in past decades. Most of this demand is met by imports from developing countries. This article examines the main factors affecting the choice of farm households to adopt organic tea production in Northern Vietnam. We apply a logit model to survey data from 241 Vietnamese tea farming households.