Agriculture, aquaculture firms focus on growing their own raw materials

Ho Chi Minh City - More and more agriculture and aquaculture businesses are setting up their own farms rather than rely on imports for raw materials.

TH Group has for instance been building a hi-tech dairy cow farm and milk processing plant in An Giang province since the end of February. When completed, it will be the largest closed-loop dairy cow farming project in the Mekong Delta with around 10,000 cows.

Other dairy companies too have been investing in farms, boosting raw milk production by 12.9 per cent last year to 1.1 million tonnes.

TH is also developing a hi-tech co-operative model to work with dairy farming households in An Giang.

Fruit processing businesses are working with farmers to ensure regular supply and satisfy foreign markets' requirements with respect to origin. Farmers have their fruits bought at high prices. Vina T&T, for instance, is buying star apples at 40,000 VND (1.73 USD) per kilogramme, doubling the market price.

Trung An Hi-tech Agriculture JSC is working with farmers in Kien Giang province and Can Tho city to grow 1,400 hectares of organic rice, guaranteeing them much higher prices than the market.

Pham Thai Binh, general director of the company, told Nguoi Lao Dong (Labourers) newspaper that the most important factor for successful co-operation is guaranteeing farmers’ incomes.

Pham Ngoc Hoang, General Director of Hoang Ha Commerce and Production Company Ltd, said small farming households account for a large part of Vietnam’s agriculture, but export markets demand consistent quality and absence of chemical residues.

Businesses need to work with farmers to buy raw materials, but there should be policies to ensure certain crops are not overly farmed, which will keep output under control and ensure businesses collaborate with farmers, he added.

The first two months of 2021 saw exports of agriculture, forestry and aquaculture products rise by 16.6 percent year-on-year to 6.17 billion USD.

Exports of agriculture, forestry and aquaculture last year were worth 41.2 billion USD, partly due to the development of specialised farming areas that allow large-scale production and traceability of origin.