Value chain development for mountainous areas: Relation between animal breed and territory. The case of H’mong beef in Cao Bang, Vietnam

In a market economy, poor breeding farmers usually face many difficulties due to the lack of information exchange in advanced technology and science, market and breeding experience. Cao Bang Province in the mountainous North of Viet Nam has the highest household poverty ratio, with 40% in 2007. The H’mong minority settled recently in the agro-ecological setting of the high mountains of Northern Vietnam, including Cao Bang, with small-scale land; therefore intensive livestock has become a main source for their livelihood. Cao Bang has two main local cattle races namely, “Small yellow” and “H’mong” registered in the Vietnam animal breed Atlas. H’mong beef accounts for 30% number of total animal. H’mong beef is indigenous breed, fairly weight, mature male beef weigh 400 – 600 kg, fresh red meat, and smooth muscle, special sweet tasting. This local H’mong beef has good meat quality but this quality value is not known by supermarket in cities due to the weak coordination in beef value chain. An actionresearch by CASRAD/CIRAD funded by IFAD (Superchain project) and aiming to link rural poor households to supermarkets and other quality chains has selected the H’mong beef value chain. The objective is to develop small scale H’mong beef farming in groups, and link them to high value chains becoming a localized production cluster, in a way which is suitable to breeding conditions in mountainous areas. The approach is based on the theories of Institutional economics and collective action (Dao the Anh et al., 2007). Collective actions of small scale farmers may reduce transaction costs; increase the size of commodities in trading and the possibility of market access of the farmers. It is also based on value chain analyze (Kaplinsky et al. 2001; Gereffi et al., 2003). Characteristics of transactions, in particular in terms of quality, and the supplier’s capacity will create different regulating structures of the value chains. The supply capacity in terms of quantity and quality is the key barrier of participation of the poor into the value chain.