Enhancing competitiveness for Vietnamese agricultural products

Difficulties from raw material area… to processing

One of the reasons pointed out by experts is that Vietnam has not yet formed a raw material area linked to serve processing and consumption with businesses, so in the past, the implementation of State policies has not been carried out synchronously, especially credit policies, agricultural insurance, and quality management of growing areas linked to the value chain.

Pineapple growing area in Lai Chau . Photo: Laichau.gov.vn

This is also the reason why the quality and competitiveness of agricultural products are limited; production efficiency is not high, while risks, production waste as well as post-harvest losses are still high, causing farmers' income to remain low.

In a conference on the implementation of building and developing standard agricultural and forestry raw material areas, leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development frankly admitted that the development of agricultural and forestry raw material areas still has many limitations, namely: small-scale, fragmented production, lack of cooperation and linkage between farming households and linkage with processing and consumption enterprises.

Many raw material areas have gradually been formed but have not been organized and managed, have weak infrastructure, and lack production data information to trace product origins and build growing area codes, especially in large raw material areas for inter-regional goods serving processing and export.

This has led to a situation where many agricultural processing enterprises have to operate at a standstill, even at risk of bankruptcy, due to insufficient raw materials for processing.

In addition to the issue of raw material areas, the fact that processed products are mainly semi-processed causes low added value. The story about this issue was shared by Mr. Pham Ngoc Anh Tung - founder of Foodmap in a workshop on building Vietnamese agricultural product brands. Mr. Tung recalled that 6 years ago, Vietnamese oolong tea was only sold for 9 USD/kg, while Taiwan exported the same type to the US for up to 100 USD/kg.

Ms. Vo Thi Tam Dan - Director of Golden Dragon Tea Joint Stock Company was also very concerned when sharing the story of 1 kg of hand-picked oolong tea with 2-3 leaves, high quality, raw export price is only 10-12 USD. However, after importing countries pre-process, mix, and package under the brand of the importing unit, it is sold on the market at a price dozens of times higher.

Not only tea but many Vietnamese agricultural products are also in the same situation. This causes many Vietnamese agricultural products to not be properly recognized in terms of quality and export value.

Positive signal

In order to overcome limitations in developing raw material areas; and at the same time promote restructuring of the agricultural sector, in March 2022, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development officially launched the Pilot Project to build standard agricultural and forestry raw material areas to serve domestic consumption and export in the period 2022 - 2025.

The project was implemented in 46 districts and cities of 13 provinces, including: Hoa Binh, Son La, Quang Tri, Thua Thien - Hue, Gia Lai, Dak Lak, Dak Nong, Kon Tum, Dong Thap, Long An, Tien Giang, Kien Giang and An Giang. After 2 years of implementation, up to now, 5 pilot raw material areas have basically formed clearly and developed in terms of scale, area and quality of operations.

Specifically, the first region is fruit trees in the North, concentrated in Son La - Hoa Binh with products such as pineapple, passion fruit, mango for processing and export. The second region is planted forest wood in the Central coastal region. The third region is coffee raw materials in the Central Highlands. The fourth region is fruit concentrated in Dong Thap, Tien Giang, Long An with mango and durian trees. The fifth region is the Long Xuyen Quadrangle rice region.

The number of built linkage chains increased to 81, with the participation of 26 agricultural product purchasing and processing enterprises and 353 cooperatives, an increase of 83 cooperatives compared to the initial period.

In fact, in Gia Lai province, after the project implementation, this locality has formed and developed a large-scale coffee raw material production area, concentrated and modern goods, applying advanced technology. At the same time, over 12 agricultural cooperatives have been developed in the sustainable coffee raw material area with processing and exporting enterprises in 7 districts and cities. Thanks to that, the production value of the sub-table has also been increased.

According to the leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the success of the pilot project to build a standard agricultural and forestry raw material area not only contributes to increasing the value of agricultural products but also creates a driving force for sustainable rural economic development. The project is important in changing the mindset of fragmented and small-scale production to systematically forming standard raw material areas with accompanying institutions, which will help minimize risks for industries, directly for businesses and farmers.

The pilot project to build a standard agricultural and forestry raw material area for domestic consumption and export in the period of 2022 - 2025 is divided into 2 phases. Phase 1 (2022-2023) focuses on piloting the construction of standard raw material areas and organizing the summary and evaluation of implementation results.

Phase 2 (2024-2025), complete the project contents on agricultural extension and transfer of science and technology applications to cooperatives and people, develop, strengthen and enhance capacity for cooperatives and cooperative members; apply information technology in raw material area management, develop community agricultural extension and communication, implement credit, insurance and linkage policies according to Decree No. 98/2018/ND-CP...

Source: https://congthuong.vn/nang-suc-canh-tranh-cho-nong-san-viet-nam-359164.html