Creating competitive advantages to lychee and hill chicken

All levels, sectors and local authorities in the northern province of Bac Giang have focused on mobilizing all sources to complete the national farm produce criteria for lychee and Yen The hill chicken in order to promote them to the big markets.

The VietGAP lychee production model in Giap Son commune (Luc Ngan district).

Prioritising advantage products

Bac Giang now has 637 trademarks with common protection and foreign protection certificates bestowed by the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam (Ministry of Science and Technology). However, many products encounter several difficulties to competitive in the international markets because of disqualified technical requirement.

Thus, it is crucial to complete the national farm produce criteria in order to facilitate the agricultural products’ approaching to foreign markets.

Acknowledging this, the province has selected lychee and hill chicken to complete the criteria to be recognised as the national farm produce since 2017. Firstly, the localities have focused on the lychee recognition by 2020.

Currently, the People’s Committee in Luc Ngan and Tan Yen districts have paid due attentions to producing the lychee fruit and nearly completing the criteria as regulation such as the largest production scale nationwide with estimated output of 150,000 tonnes and total revenue of trillions of VND; VietGAP and GlobalGAP lychee cultivation areas covering over 13,000 ha.

The protected lychee with geological identification plays an important role to the local socio-economic development. During the production, the farmers have applied the achievements of the advanced scientific research to create the products with high competitiveness and big consumption potential in both domestic and foreign markets…

Similarly, the People’s Committee in Yen The district has considered the completion of national farm produce criteria as the breakthrough solution to enhance the production effectiveness and commodity value; hence issuing urgent plan and measures to implement as soon as Yen The hill chicken was selected.

After two year execution, the district has successfully built the chicken production linkage chain at Green Agriculture Cooperative while Giang Son Joint Stock Company helps well manage the herd quality. Now, the locality satisfies about 70 percent of the set criteria.

Focusing all sources to complete the criteria

Nguyen Duc Kien, Director of the Department of Science and Technology said apart from the achieved criteria, the lychee and Yen The hill chicken have encountered several obstacles in technology.

The Department consulted to the provincial People’s Committee to issue and instruct the districts to effectively execute the project to develop the lychee toward national farm produce title.

More than 14 billion VND (nearly 603,000 USD) was mobilized to apply the science, build the production model, linkage chain, preservation and processing technology in Luc Ngan and Tan Yen districts, link to enterprises to apply the lychee preservation procedure such as radiation, Modified Atmosphere Packing, Israel technology, CAS…

Additionally, the province instructed the departments, sectors and localities to build the national farm product criteria for Yen The hill chicken that is scheduled to be completed by 2022.

The localities actively welcomed the policy and guidance to realize the project with high determination. Depending on the advantages and starting points in each area, the locals have proactively conducted their own method of implementation.

The government and people in Luc Ngan and Yen The districts have established the division and group to link and consume the products to realize the goal of 80 percent of households participating in value chain by 2020.

It is the key task to mobilise all sources to expand the lychee cultivation area under VietGAP up to 15,500 ha; grow 100 – 200 ha of GlobalGAP and organic lychees; invest in modern preservation machine to ensure the target to make lychee the first national farm product of the province.