DOI: 10.1111/jiec.12966 RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS Regional material flow behaviors of agro-food processing craft villages in Red River Delta, Vietnam Gold Contribution Accessibility Silver Nguyet Thi Tran Dirk Weichgrebe Institute for Sanitary Engineering and Waste Management, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany Correspondence Nguyet Thi Tran, Project Offfice for Sustainabil- ity Research in Vietnam, Vietnamese-German Center, Hanoi University of Science and Technol- ogy, 1 Dai Co Viet, 100000 Hanoi, Vietnam. Email: ttn@vd-office.org; trannguyet033@yahoo.com Dirk Weichgrebe, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover, Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany. Email: weichgrebe@isah.uni-hannover.de Funding information This work is funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF) and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in the framework of NaWaM program. Editor Managing Review: Ichiro Daigo [After initial online publication, the article was changed to correctly indicate the applicable legal regulation that applies to craft villages and that FPCVs is an abbreviation for “agro-Food Processing Craft Villages.” Additionally, the publisher mistakenly published the wrong data openness badge and this has been corrected.] Abstract The economic reform “ĐổiMới” in 1986 has rapidly increased the number of craft villages in Viet- nam, especially in the Red River Delta (RRD) leading to environmental degradation. This article presents an assessment of environmental and resource issues of agro-Food Processing Craft Villages (FPCVs) in RRD using a refined approach to material flow analysis focusing on consistent quantification of uncertainty with particular attention to secondary and empirical data that are often faced in material flow analyses in transition economies. Material flows of agro-Food Process- ing including eight types of production were examined and linked to activities of private House- holds, Rice Cultivation, and Pig Farming in a model called Red River Delta. Materials investigated were Goods (i.e., total materials), organic carbon (org.C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P). The findings reveal material cycles are almost entirely open, that is, the materials used in FPCVs do not recycle within the region. From ∼10.5 million tons/year of imported Goods used for agro-Food Processing, final products and utilized materials account for minor fractions (∼5%, by weight). Conversely, the majority (88%) is directly discharged. Materials accumulated as stocks represent 1% of Goods (100,000 tons/year), 21% of org.C (∼34,000 tons/year), 42% of N (∼1,300 tons/year), and 57% of P(∼300 tons/year), whose substance concentrations vastly exceed natural resilience capacities. Although agro-Food Processing accounts for negligible material shares in Red River Delta, FPCVs pollution is severe at local levels due to the location of home-based production. Several options for closing material loops at various system scales are recommended for environmental and resource management of FPCVs. The material flow analysis results provide a database that may be used as a decision support tool for production establishments in craft villages and relevant authorities in setting priorities on environmental planning and resource management. This article met the requirements for a gold – silver JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges. KEYWORDS craft villages, data uncertainty analysis, industrial ecology, material flow analysis (MFA), Red River Delta, transition economies 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Agro-food processing craft villages in Red River Delta Craft villages are characterized by more than 20% of craft production households operating in a stable condition for at least 2 years and obey- ing environmental legislation (52/2018/NĐ-CP, 2018). In this study, agro-Food Processing Craft Villages (FPCVs) refer to craft villages process- ing foods from raw agricultural products. FPCVs are mainly located in RRD (39/BC-UBTVQH13, 2011; Chi, 2005; Fanchette, Stedman, Carlet- Soulages, & Digregorio, 2010; GSO, 2012; Sakata, 2010, 2013; Tha . ch, 2006; WB, 2012). They have a long tradition and are the most common type This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. c  2019 The Authors. Journal of Industrial Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Yale University Journal of Industrial Ecology 2020;24:707–725. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jiec 707