Coffee–Livestock Research — Vietnam

For six months I worked as an agronomic research intern with CIRAD, based in Hanoi and out in the field in northwest Vietnam. The work was part of the ASSET project, focused on smallholder farmers who grow coffee alongside keeping livestock.

My focus was the socio-economic side: labour and livelihood indicators among these coffee–livestock households. I designed the survey, ran a workshop to train the local researchers helping carry it out, and conducted interviews with farmers myself.

Back from the field, I analysed the data in R, wrote up the findings, and presented them. It was a long, detailed piece of work — and a reminder that farming systems are as much about people and economics as they are about plants and soil.