Three weeks ago, I traveled to Vietnam to provide methodological support on how to calculate production costs, margins and profits in value chains as part of the REVALTER project on future prospects for livestock in Vietnam.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) has partnered with other French and Vietnamese research organizations in this project funded by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD). REVALTER is also mapped to the Livestock and Fish CGIAR Research Program, the program contributes to some of the time of the ILRI researchers involved.

Using a method similar to the one I had already used in West Africa two years ago, we spent two days discussing the accounts tables of producers, traders, processors and retailers in the pig and milk value chains of Vietnam. The objective was to come up with numbers for costs, and especially profits, which could be…