Integrating Farming (VAC)

This section addresses integrated farming approaches that have been promoted as alternatives to Green Revolution agriculture since the 1990s for self-sufficient farming. The New Theory farming system in Thailand and the VAC system in Vietnam (VAC in Vietnamese is Vuon, Ao, Chuong which means “garden/pond/ livestock pen”) consist in highly bio-intensive methods of small scale farming in which food gardening, fish rearing and animal husbandry are integrated. These intensive farming practices, which integrate food and energy systems, make optimal use of land, water and solar energy in order to achieve high economic efficiency with low capital investments.