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In an age of market liberalization, globalization, and expanding agribusiness, there is a danger that small-scale farmers will find difficulty in fully participating in the market economy. One of the solutions to solve the above situation is to strengthen linkages between farmers and firms through contract farming. The purpose of this study is to assess the factors affecting the level of linkages between businesses and farmers in crop development in Thai Binh province, Vietnam. The two main research methods used were exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and regression analysis with survey data which was conducted from 300 farmers, 10 firms, and 15 factors related to contract-farming. The results indicated that there are 5 factors that significantly affect the level of participation of farmers in the linking process, the order of impacts from strong to weak is as follows: (1) Commitment and sharing of benefits and risks between farmers and firms in the linking process, (2) Issues related to management skills and enterprises capacity of link firms, (3) Price issues that farmers are interested in in the process of implementing links with firms, (4) Policy environment - Institutions related to farmer contracts between firms and farmers, (5) Household awareness about the benefits brought about by farmer contracts with firms. Based on results, a number of specific solutions have been proposed to enhance the efficiency of farming contracts between firms and farmers in cultivation production.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the monetary value of the main environmental and external costs of Yali Hydropower Plant (YHPP) and to incorporate them into the financial viability indices of the plant, namely its net present value and electricity price. The results were found that if the electricity price is kept at its original level of 5.2 US cents/kWh to cover direct costs only, the net present value of the plant would be reduced to about 27% by incorporating environmental and external costs. Alternatively, the electricity price would have to be increased to 5.68 US cents/kWh in order to cover the full costs of YHPP and to maintain the original net present value. The main policy recommendations are: Government regulations should require that the financial analysis and appraisal of all future electricity sources include the full cost of these schemes, including not only direct costs but also environmental and external costs related to preventing or mitigating the environmental impact caused by them. An appropriate financial mechanism should be established to allocate the revenue from full cost electricity pricing to a fund to cover the environmental protection and compensation costs.