Impact of projects initiating group marketing of smallholder farmers—A case study of pig producer marketing groups in Vietnam

•Propensity score matching was used to evaluate the economic success.•Supporting farmer groups with training and in-kind subsidies seem to have the highest impact on the increase of income of group members.•Linking farmers to the market or opening up new marketing potentials could be considered a success.

In recent years, several projects in Vietnam have focused on establishing farmer groups to link small-scale pig producers to markets in order to improve their livelihoods. To compare the success between different approaches and by contrasting them to individual farmers without joint marketing, data were collected from 286 members of 18 pig marketing groups initiated by seven projects and from 479 non-members in three provinces and the capital of Vietnam. Groups were categorized in Common Interest Groups, Cooperative Groups and Cooperatives. All groups were comparatively described according to member set-up, management, financing and marketing. Propensity score matching was used to evaluate the economic success, as one of the key factors for a long-term operation of farmer groups. Results showed that the intervention projects supporting farmer groups with training and in-kind subsidies seem to have the highest impact on the increase of income of members in comparison with non-members.