Chapter 13 country scoping and prioritization studies on FSF, prepared by national experts of Viet Nam, which provide a comprehensive overview on the status and availability of FSF in the region. Each report has an introductory section with an overview on the country, agro-ecological zones, and status of the current food basket including staple crops, as well as major cropping patterns and crop diversity within these systems. The second section of each study comprises a situation and gap analysis to identify the major challenges each country is facing with regard to hunger and malnutrition, and climate change, as well as economic and cultural aspects. Nutrition challenges are the component with the highest priority and refer to undernourishment; stunting; wasting; underweight; micronutrient deficiencies such as anaemia; vitamin A, zinc or iodine deficiency; and overweight and obesity. Challenges associated with climate change are climate variability (e.g. drought, flood, heat waves) and seasonality that can negatively affect agricultural production systems. In the economic environment, the main risk factors are price fluctuations and commercial potential, distance, access to transportation, and infrastructure. Other challenges are the existing gap between informal and formal markets, unfavourable value-chain arrangements, subsistence farming and local diets, including traditional food habits, food taboos and religious restrictions. Following the section on addressing the identified major challenges, a detailed scoping and prioritization of the availability and use of FSF in each country was undertaken based on nutritional value, adaptation to local environments and climate change, as well as economic, social and cultural potential. The results of this prioritization process led to a list of up to six proposed crops in each country. These crops can meet some of the prominent malnutrition challenges, as they complement existing cropping systems, and are deemed to be economically feasible and culturally acceptable. Viet Nam (by Pham Hung Cuong) can be divided into eight eco-agricultural zones. Its traditional farming base is an integrated system of rice and other crops. Viet Nam’s agricultural share of economic output declined from about 25 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2016. Cereals are the main source of energy in the Vietnamese diet providing 78 percent of total energy. The main food is rice, with an average daily consumption of 400 g per person in all regions of the country. Other staple foods such as corn and cassava are grown in the mountainous and plateau regions, sweet potatoes are grown in the plain regions, and roots and tubers are grown in the midland and mountainous regions. In addition to rice and other staple foods, vegetables, tubers, fruits, oily nuts, beans, soya beans and soya products (tofu, soy sauce and soymilk) play an important role in the Vietnamese diet. The diversity of vegetables includes amaranth, bottle gourd, broccoli, cabbage, celery, chayote, Indian spinach, jute, kohlrabi, lettuce, luffa, pumpkins, radish, squash, star-gooseberry, vegetable beans and water spinach. The daily diet also includes diverse fruits depending on the region. Popular fruits are banana, grapefruit, guava, jackfruit, mango, oranges, papaya and tangerines. In the daily diet, along with plentiful seafood, the amount of meat and animal products has increased significantly Viet Nam has made good progress in reducing stunting, which declined from 23 percent in 2011 to 19 percent in 2015. However, overweight and obesity have become a national concern affecting 5 percent of children and 8 percent of women, while at the same time, twice as many women are underweight. Iodine deficiency has resurfaced as a significant public health concern; anaemia continues to affect children under five years old and non-pregnant women. According to a report of the National Institute of Nutrition, the rate of anaemia among women of childbearing age (not pregnant) is 29 percent and among pregnant women is 36.5 percent, reaching its highest percentage in the northern mountainous domain and Central Highlands with nearly 60 percent. Crop yields in Viet Nam are above the mean level for Asia due to high applications of agricultural inputs and the conversion of marginal lands previously regarded as unsuitable for agriculture. However, over-intensive land utilization is increasing soil erosion and reducing soil fertility. High-intensity rainfall, suboptimal irrigation techniques, and a lack of incentives for farmers to adopt sustainable natural-resource management has led to high levels of soil loss, as well as pesticide and fertilizer runoff, which reduces productivity and causes groundwater and surface water contamination. In economic terms, rural value-chain stakeholders generally only receive a meager share of the value of the final agro-product, usually due to the small scale of production, non-homogenous product quality, poor market information and knowledge, high transaction cost per unit of marketed product, cash shortage, and perishability of product. NUS are grown primarily by native farmers in their place of origin, where they are still important for the livelihood of local communities, or were once more widely grown but are today falling into disuse for a variety of agronomic, genetic, economic and cultural factors. The following FSF crops in Viet Nam have been prioritized: 1 cereals – buckwheat/mạch ba góc; 2 roots and tubers – taro/khoai môn sọ; 3 roots and tubers – greater yam/củ mỡ; 4) pulses – cowpea/Đậu các loại; 4 pulses – mung bean/Đậu xanh; and 5 horticultural crops – pumpkin/bí ngô