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Vietnam still lacking programme for preservation of fruit
Vietnam still cannot earn much money from fruit exports, not because it lacks orders, but because it does not have enough fruit of the necessary quality.
Not enough quality fruit to fulfill export contracts
In the north, litchi and longan are considered the two kinds of fruit most suitable for export thanks to the big growing areas and high-quality products. However, the problem lies in the fact that the fruits are very ‘fastidious’, requiring special preservation techniques.
In mid June 2009, a Hanoi-based farm produce exporter shipped 80 tonnes of Thanh Ha litchis to Canada. The director of the company related that he had to move heaven and earth to come up with 80 tonnes of quality litchis, though the litchi output in Vietnam is thousands of tonnes.
Explaining this, Dr Hoang Le Hang from the Vegetable and Fruit Research Institute said that post-harvest preservation work plays the most important role in deciding the quality of fruit exports.
In order to satisfy difficult-to-please importers, Vietnamese have to provide products with high quality. However, it is really difficult to have high quality products with the current small scale of production.
Cold bonded warehouses? It’s far away
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the loss ratio after harvesting is relatively high at 25-28 percent of total output. Meanwhile, the quality of fruit after harvest is believed drops by 20 percent due to bad preservation.
The ministry has also cited a lot of other problems in fruit preservation, including lack of depots and cold storage and backward preservation technologies. That also explains why exporting fruit to Europe and the US proves to be a difficult to solve problem as fruit needs to be preserved for an extended period.
Even the export of fruit to China, a neighbouring country, has faced difficulties. Big volumes of fruit have been reportedly thrown away recently after having gotten rotten while sitting for several days at the border gate.
In fact, the Vegetable and Fruit Research Institute many times has asked for cold storages to be built in transit places or border gates for the temporary preservation of fruit when customs procedures have hitches. However, there are still no such storages.
However, Dr Hang said that cold storages are just a temporary measure. In the long term, Hang said, it is necessary to programme fruit-growing areas.
In the north, to date, only 2,500 hectares of Luc Ngan litchi growing area meet VietGap standards, while only 10 percent of Hung Yen longan meet the requirements for safe material growing areas.
Farm produce exports decrease in first six months of 2009
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in the first half of 2009, the total export turnover of agro-forestry and seafood products was estimated at $7.6 billion, down by 2.4 percent over the same period of 2008. Of this amount, the export turnover of key farm produce was $4.3 billion, down by 0.39 percent, while the export turnover of key forestry produce was $1.2 billion, down by 18 percent, and seafood export turnover $1.7 billion, down by 11 percent.
VietNamNet, LD
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