Finding a sustainable output for clean agricultural products

​(CTT-Dong Nai) – Dong Nai has a large area of fruit trees plantations, with a wide variety of popular choices like: banana, rambutan, durian, mangosteen, avocado, guava,… However, every harvest season, farmers often fall into a situation where the harvest is devalued. The reason is that there is not a connection between supply and demand, production has not been following clean processes to meet export-oriented markets.

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A farmer in Long Khanh City cultivating his durian trees 

Nearly 77 thousand ha of planted fruit trees
Mr. Cao Tien Sy, Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that Dong Nai with its natural resources, nutritional soil and a favorable location allow for planting fruit trees of high economic value. Currently, the area of planted fruit trees in the province is nearly 77,000 hectares. Although the area of fruit trees accounts for only about 45% of the total area of perennial crops in the province, they make up a very high proportion with nearly 70% (more than 10 thousand billion VND) of the total value of the cropping industry.

In recent years, the structure of crops in the province has shifted rapidly towards sustainable efficiency. In which, farmers are mainly converting perennial industrial crops such as pepper, cashew, rubber to fruit trees such as pomelo, durian, banana, jackfruit, etc. The crop production rate has been at 2-2.5% in recent years (in the context of a large reduction in agricultural production area to implement investment projects in the province).

Currently, Dong Nai has a variety of fruit trees with the largest scale and productivity in the country, such as: bananas (more than 14,000 hectares, ranked first in the country); over 12,000 hectares of mangoes, placed second in the country (after Son La); 10.6 thousand hectares of pomelo, ranked second in the country (after Ben Tre); durian is nearly 11.4 thousand ha, ranked 4th in the country….

The whole province currently has 2 specialized zones for planting fruit trees, all of which were granted geographical indications: pomelo in Tan Trieu and rambutan in Long Khanh. In addition, in the province, many concentrated and large-scale specialized fruit growing zones have been formed, such as bananas in Trang Bom and Thong Nhat districts; durian in Cam My, Tan Phu, Xuan Loc districts, Long Khanh city; mango in Dinh Quan, Xuan Loc; citrus trees in Vinh Cuu and Tan Phu districts;…

Lately, in order to promote crop production in particular and fruit trees in general, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has coordinated with other departments, offices and localities to review and designate 98 concentrated production areas of nearly 19 thousand hectares, 8 high-tech production areas with a scale of more than 6.5 thousand hectares in Cam My, Vinh Cuu, Dinh Quan, Xuan Loc, Thong Nhat, Nhon Trach districts and 10 plantations in the vicinity of Tan Phu, Dinh Quan, Vinh Cuu, Xuan Loc, Cam My districts with an area of 21.4 thousand hectares, all of which are eligible to develop organic agricultural zones.

Effectively deploying mechanisms, policies, programs and projects to promote the development of production methods and form horizontal - vertical links: the field of crop production has so far formed 144 linkage chains, with a scale of more than 13,000 hectares, including 88 chains of fruit trees, and 249 farms.

Regarding the development of standards and technical regulations for products to expand the consumer market, the province currently has more than 1.6 thousand hectares of fruit trees with food safety certification; 2 durian and pomelo planting models with a scale of 4.3 ha in Cam My and Thong Nhat districts which had received organic certification; some fruit products such as pomelo, durian, mango, rambutan of cooperatives were granted 3-star OCOP product certification. In addition, many models of fruit tree cultivations with high economic value have been established, which are 2 to 3 times more efficient than mass production, especially the durian model (5 models cover an area of 706 ha) is profitable, netting from 700 million VND/VND to 1 billion VND/ha/year.

Regarding promoting product consumption chain, the Department also has coordinated with the Department of Industry and Trade and other departments and localities to promptly inform businesses, cooperatives and people about the developments of domestic and international markets; supporting cooperatives and farms to participate in trade promotion fairs inside and outside the province. In first half of 2023, the Provincial People's Committee successfully organized two export ceremonies for banana and durian products to the Chinese market, and held a festival honoring fruit products of Dong Nai province.

Regarding promoting agricultural export activities, the province currently has 141 growing areas and 82 packing facilities for agricultural products for export to China, the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In particular, the Chinese market alone has 104 growing areas, of which 12 are durian plantations, 18 are for mango, 22 are for rambutan, 30 are for banana, 13 are for jackfruit and 9 are for dragon fruit.

The Fruit Festival that recently was held in Long Khanh City 

Avoid the repetition of “good season, bad value"

The leadership at the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development admitted that, previously, the production and consumption of agricultural products and fruits faced many difficulties, or fell into a state of devaluation, too much supply but no demand.

The main reasons leading to the above situation are: production chains have been established but they are still unsustainable; most of the associated contracts have a short execution time, most of which are seasonal contracts.

The technical standards of agricultural products is still limited, especially food safety standards and design specifications, which is a bottleneck in expanding new markets while the traditional market is facing difficulties.

Calling for capable businesses to invest and participate in the association of the crop production sector faces difficulties, because some agricultural production zones are located far from non-agricultural land planning areas and other agricultural land, so they are not allowed to set up essential supporting infrastructure for production and preliminary processing. Production scale is fragmented and small, while most businesses demand for large scale production, businesses are also afraid to directly link with many farmers, while cooperatives have not been fulfilling their role as a bridge between people and businesses.

In particular, supply and demand is a macro level problem. Currently, there are no regulations on management and planning in agricultural production, so in addition to propagating, orientation and policies, the State has no sanctions to regulate production activities of households. Therefore, the situation of people massively switching to crops of higher economic value in recent years is present. Specifically, since durian was officially exported to China, the area of durian cultivation in the provinces of the Mekong Delta, Central Highlands and Dong Nai has grown rapidly in recent years.

Therefore, in the coming time, localities need to experiment and demonstrate their strategic visions in sustainable agricultural and rural development to integrate into the socio-economic development plan and the provincial planning period 2021 - 2030 with a vision to 2050, in which some issues such as: arranging land bank to create suitable space for preservation, storage and preliminary processing systems, packaging agricultural products associated with concentrated production areas for local key products, especially production areas associated with high-value and competitive industries of the province such as bananas, pomelos , durian, mango…

The province is planning to speed up the construction of 2 agricultural processing clusters in Long Giao commune, Cam My district and a processing industry cluster in Phu Tuc commune, Dinh Quan district.

Associating the establishment of new agricultural cooperatives with the building of supply chain; linking product branding with the OCOP program; encouraging enterprises to participate in the implementation of supply chain in the locality; increasing the level of support for product brands promotion and market expansion for products participating in the supply chain in the province.  

Increasing the amount of mechanization in every stages of production, preservation and processing of agricultural products, suitable to the conditions of each region, each type of crop and livestock; establishing production areas that meet the standards of quality and scale to satisfy the needs of transportation between processing factories and export markets.

And finally, effectively implementing mechanisms and policies to invest in agriculture to free up resources for development, such as: supporting enterprises to invest in agriculture; production chains; safe production environment; trade promotion...​