For anyone working on food systems governance, the challenge is rarely a shortage of information. Often, it is the fragmentation of it, nutritional data here, supply chain data there, poverty indicators somewhere else, none of it speaking to the rest.
The EcoFoodSystems Project, funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the European Commission through the DeSIRA initiative, is working to fill that gap. Led by the University of Galway, in partnership with Rikolto and Wageningen University & Research, the project is developing a dashboard that brings together data across multiple dimensions of a city region food system in one place, and in a format designed for decision-makers.
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The dashboard brings together data spanning the full length of a city region food system, from supply chains and market infrastructure to nutrition, poverty, and the policies that shape them all. Further modules are in development.
The logic behind this architecture is that a city government trying to improve food security cannot act on nutrition data alone. Nutritional outcomes are affected by supply chains, market infrastructure, economic conditions, land use, and regulatory frameworks, all at once. The EcoFoodSystems Dashboard is being designed to make the connections between these dimensions visible and navigable in a single interface.
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In a two-day consultation event held in Hanoi, Vietnam on 14–15 April 2026, Rikolto and the University of Galway, in collaboration with the Centre for Agrarian Systems Research and Development (CASRAD), a key member of the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VAAS), brought together stakeholders working across the Hanoi City Region food system to review the current prototype.
Participants reviewed the prototype, identified gaps, and shared feedback on how the dashboard could better support their decision-making. The EcoFoodSystems team will incorporate those recommendations into the next phase of development.
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The dashboard's value for practitioners is the ability to cross different areas of the food system. A policymaker working on food safety regulations can see how those regulations interact with the economic conditions of vendors and the nutritional outcomes for consumers. A city planner working on market infrastructure can see how supply chain flows and food loss patterns relate to what is actually available and affordable in different parts of the city. A public health official can see how poverty indicators and food environment data together explain nutritional outcomes that neither dataset explains alone.
The EcoFoodSystems Dashboard is being developed as a decision-support tool that city region stakeholders will be able to use in their work. CASRAD's involvement is notable, given its role as a contributor to Vietnam's National Action Plan to Transform a Transparent, Responsible, and Sustainable Food System by 2030.
The meeting drew senior representatives from across Vietnam's food and agriculture landscape. Opening speakers included: Dr. Vu Thi Hang, Deputy Director General of the Department of Science and Technology at the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment; Dr. Trinh Van Tuan, Director of CASRAD; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dao The Anh, President of the Vietnam Rural Development Science Association; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Minh Tien, Vice President of the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Truong Tuyet Mai, Vice Director of the National Institute of Nutrition; Dr. Le Tran Phong, Deputy Head of the Division of Science and Intellectual Property at the Hanoi Department of Science and Technology; and Dr. Peter McKeown, EcoFoodSystems Project Leader at the University of Galway.
Keynote presentations were delivered by Mr. Vu Lan Sinh, Chairman of Huong Viet Sinh Co., Ltd., who spoke on climate-resilient, ecological food systems transformation and his company's closed-loop ecosystem for safe food supply; and Dr. Pham Van Hoi of Vietnam National University of Agriculture, who presented findings on agroecological practices and sustainable vegetable production in Hanoi, drawing on the TAPE pilot and the Agroeconvert project.
For more information about the EcoFoodSystems project in Hanoi, please reach out to our colleague Tuan Dam - Rikolto's Good Food for Cities programme coordinator in Vietnam, at tuan.dam@rikolto.org.
The writing of this article was assisted by Copilot.
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