Strength planning of Dong Nai industrial crops in long term

​Harvest pepper in Hung Loc commune (Thong Nhat district). Credit: Phan Anh

During the integration period, Dong Nai has determined that cashew, pepper, coffee, and rubber trees are still the key agricultural products with many development advantages of the province. The province is attracting investment for deep processing to increase the value of the above crops.

Export advantage

The whole province has more than 106,000 hectares of perennial industrial crops, of which rubber tree area is more than 45.7 thousand hectares, cashew tree area is over 33.9 thousand hectares, pepper area is nearly 13.7 thousand hectares, coffee area is over 10 thousand hectares. Not only this group is the top of key-crops in Dong Nai but is the development core in the project "The competitiveness development of agricultural products in Dong Nai province during international economic integration".

Rubber, pepper, coffee, cashew are still Dong Nai's main agricultural export groups. In the first 9 months of 2020, the province exported cashew, coffee, pepper, and rubber with more than 394.6 million USD. In which, coffee and pepper are among the few agricultural export products that still maintain their growth rate although the overall export market is heavily affected by the Covid-19 outbreak. The most impressive is the coffee export in the first 9 months of 2020 reached over 350.8 million USD, increaseD 16% over the same period last year.

According to the evaluation report of the Institute of Agricultural and Rural Development Policy and Strategy, the consultant for the project "The competitiveness development of agricultural products in Dong Nai province during international economic integration ", Vietnam is still in the top of the world in exporting coffee, pepper, cashew and rubber. The export potential of these products remains huge. Particularly, the strength of the group of perennial industrial crops in Dong Nai lays in large production area and high product outputs. Geographical position is favorable for export as a hub for highways, especially near major seaports. In addition, Dong Nai is next to the major consumer market of Ho Chi Minh City; modern industrial zones to attract investment in deep processing…

Deep processing investmentHarvest coffee in Song Thao commune (Trang Bom district). Credit: Phan Anh

Recently, a series of trade agreements have taken effect such as: ASEAN - China Trade in Goods Agreement; Trade in Goods Agreement ASEA; Free Trade Agreement Vietnam - EU ... with the import tax rate of some agricultural products from  0%. This is considered a great opportunity for Vietnam to continue promoting agricultural exports to markets, especially fastidious markets.

Assessing the opportunity to boost exports to the European common market, Mr. Jos Leeters, Director of Bureau Leeters (Netherlands) confirmed, Vietnam - EU Free Trade Agreement and many other trade agreements are boosting Vietnam's exports, helping to diversify markets and export products, especially agricultural and aquatic products and other Vietnamese goods that have many advantages. This is a great incentive for businesses to expand export markets, participate in value chains as well as global production networks.

However, in reality, Vietnam's agricultural export has not yet matched its potential. In which, the biggest reason is that Vietnam still mainly exports raw goods and has not invested deeply in processing.

According to Prof. Dr. Nguyen Hong Son, Director of the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in order for Vietnamese agricultural products not to fall into a vicious cycle of losing prices, production areas must attract businesses to invest in the processing field. With the small and scattered production conditions like in Vietnam, the processing factories should be invested in the raw material areas to save costs.

According to some enterprises, Dong Nai's coffee and pepper exports still grew well while the whole country declined because Dong Nai attracted many large enterprises in the agricultural product processing, export and trading industry. Specifically, the report of Dong Nai Department of Agriculture and Rural Development on the agricultural product processing industry, the whole province has 150 establishments processing products of industrial crops such as coffee, pepper, cashew, cocoa ... In which, mainly coffee and cashew processing establishments. Specifically, the whole province has 50 establishments and hundreds of cashew processing households with a total design capacity of about 45 thousand tons of raw materials / year. The whole province also has 29 coffee processing enterprises and more than 38 small production establishments.

Phan Anh 

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Hong Son commented, Dong Nai has advantages over other localities in investing in agricultural product processing because the province has a developed industrial park, convenient traffic, especially very close to major seaports.  In parallel with attracting businesses to invest in the processing of local strong agricultural products such as pepper, coffee, cashew, Dong Nai must have a plan for specialized farming areas, creating a connection between raw material areas with processing plants.