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Vietnam agricultural strength bears little fruit at home
Although it is a major agricultural exporter, Vietnam still imports a huge amount of produce and experts say it’s a trend that the country should not be proud of.
The lack of barriers against cheap imports and poor marketing have pushed the country’s own produce to the back of the shelf at local markets where fruits and vegetables from overseas are much more popular.
Chinese wholesaler Ly A Mui told Thanh Nien that 90 percent of all melon seeds sold in Vietnam come from China.
The seeds, a popular snack during the Tet (Lunar New Year) Festival, used to be planted and processed widely in central Vietnam. But Mui said most of the fresh melon seeds are now imported from China and local factories only dry them before selling them in the market.
Binh Thuan Province alone is expected to import 600-800 tons of Chinese melon seeds for this Tet, which falls in mid February, she said, noting that the seeds are transported through northern borders.
The owner of a melon seeds factory in the province said there were only 20 large factories like his around the country and they all used Chinese materials.
“At first China didn’t have so many melon seeds to export,” he said. “Its popular large seed variety was in fact propagated from a strain grown in Vietnam’s Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan provinces.”
In Ninh Thuan’s Phuoc Dinh Commune, once the capital of melon seeds, the planting area has shrunk rapidly to only eight hectares from around 500 hectares in 2004. Farmers there said they had to quit planting because they couldn’t fight against imported goods.
But melon seed is not the only produce that can be planted in Vietnam but is still being imported in huge volumes.
The country imported nearly US$300 million worth of fruits and vegetables last year, up 40.3 percent from 2008. China accounted for 59 percent of this intake with $160 million as it sold various products to Vietnam including mushrooms, potatoes, corn and peas. Thailand came second with its exports to Vietnam worth nearly $50 million, consisting mainly of flowers and fruits.
The problem, analysts said, is many of the imported products can be produced at home, and some are even the country’s key staples.
Alarming trend
Vietnam’s agricultural, forestry and fisheries exports reached $15.4 billion last year, with agricultural produce accounting for more than $8 billion, official statistics showed. The figure was higher than the target of $14 billion. Vietnam was also among the top exporters in the world of various products including rice, pepper, cashew and coffee in terms of volume.
The country, however, imports almost every agricultural product, from spices and dairy products to vegetables, fruits and even rice, which analysts said they found really strange.
Nguyen Ba Dinh, Deputy Head of the Cai Lai Port Customs in Ho Chi Minh City, said it upset him to see the flooding of foreign products into the local market.
“Cat Lai Port alone handled 37,000 tons of garlic and 38,000 tons of carrot imported from China last year, not to mention many other products,” he said. “It’s an alarming trend for the agriculture sector.”
Nguyen Van Nam, former head of the Trade Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said Vietnam should not blame this “sad situation” on global integration.
“It’s a result of weakness in [market] management, production and distribution,” he said.
‘Unacceptable’
“As a resident of an agricultural country with more than 70 percent of the population living in rural regions, it’s sad and humbling to see a lot of imported produce in local supermarkets,” said Vu Trong Binh, director of the Rural Development Center at Hanoi-based Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development.
“Of course there are certain goods from other countries that we can’t compete with. But it’s unacceptable when our strong and high-quality products lose against imports right in the local market.
“This can only be explained by ineffective marketing,” Binh said. He noted that the country has failed to set up technical barriers to eliminate unqualified foreign products from the market.
Pham Quang Dieu, Head of the Agricultural and Rural Development Information Center under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, agreed that Vietnamese agricultural products are losing in their own playground.
“Thai oranges and Chinese apples are everywhere at local markets and supermarkets,” Dieu said.
While local products have not been distributed successfully, weak management also allows low-quality products from other countries to flood the domestic market, he said.
The sustainable development of the agriculture sector has not been secured, and this is not only hurting farmers and businesses but also restricting the benefits that local consumers should get, Dieu said.
Fighting back
Faced with the stiff competition, some localities have been mulling strategies to fight back.
Binh Thuan Province, for instance, has sought assistance from the Institute of Agricultural Science for Southern Vietnam to improve a local strain of melon seed. The strain is now being planted on a small scale in the province, and is expected to be able to compete with Chinese melon seeds later.
Nguyen Van Thanh, Director of An Giang’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the Mekong Delta province would develop a large cultivation area for vegetables because only large scale production can make local products competitive.
Imported vegetables are now really cheap and many products are not safe for consumers, he said.
But with imports remaining really attractive, Thanh said he knows it is going to be “a great challenge.”
ThanhNien
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