Characteristics of rural smallholder communities in northern Vietnam, with particular emphasis on dairy farming.

The objective of this field questionnaire survey was to provide information about the characteristics of rural smallholder farming communities, which have been targeted by the Vietnamese government's dairy development policy. The results from this study suggest that the adoption of dairy farming is partly determined by pre-existing wealth of the farming households. It is, therefore, more likely that while the government's dairy development policy has achieved its first objective of an increase in the dairy cattle population, it has been less successful at achieving the second objective of reducing the level of poverty within rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]