In Hanoi, where the population of 7.5 million is rapidly increasing with the influx of migrants from other provinces, the demand for fresh, safe food is higher than ever before. A recent survey about food safety in 8 Asian countries shows that those most worried about pesticides being used to grow the vegetables they eat are in Viet Nam. This concern, though, is creating new opportunities for local farmers and civil society to come to together to promote healthy, pesticide-free, sustainable agriculture to meet Hanoi’s growing demand for safe food. But organic food must be certified as such, and that can become very expensive if smallholder farmers are to adopt the third-party certification system, which requires them to navigate a labyrinth of paperwork and shoulder the cost of an independent auditor to verify compliance with international norms and regulations that often don’t account for many of the challenges of farming in a developing nation... — Blogs.adb.org/blog