Development of Farmer Champions and their role in progressing smallholder beef production in Vietnam

‘Farmer Champions’ have an important role in promoting adoption of best practice recommendations in the communities that participate in international research for development. This paper draws on data from in-depth interviews with three Farmer Champions. It describes how the role of these Farmer Champions developed and how they have progressed beef smallholder production in Cat Trinh, a commune of the Vietnamese South Central Coastal province, Binh Dinh. Farmer Champions firstly adopt or adapt study recommendations to improve their own farming systems. They are subsequently recognised as valuable sources of knowledge and resources by surrounding farmers. Farmer Champions then facilitate significant spread (or ‘scale out’) of improved practices to other farmers. Within their community this was found to occur primarily through informal knowledge transfer pathways, while their involvement in formal pathways extended benefits to farmers outside their community. Understanding the development of Farmer Champions and how they influence scale out provides information to guide knowledge transfer methods used in future research for development, and further improve adoption of best practice recommendations.