Seeds fair opens in Ho Chi Minh City
The fifth seeds exhibition opened today in HCM City with over 350 booths set up by business groups, research institutes, schools, farms, co-operatives and businesses from around the country.
It has seven areas for showcasing agricultural materials, farm machinery and equipment, ornamental fish, bonsai, VietGap fruits and vegetables, seeds, aquaculture and livestock brood stock, and the city’s agricultural achievements.
Trần Tấn Quý, deputy director of the city Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and head of the event organisation board, said the fair is organised to showcase high-quality and high-yield seeds and animal and seafood brood stock.
It is also aimed at creating an opportunity for localities, businesses, and co-operatives to meet, compare notes, and explore business opportunities in agricultural production and trading and promote Vietnamese agricultural brands, he said.
Through the event the city hopes to enhance investment and trade promotion in the agricultural sector, helping make the city a leader in the production and supply of high-quality seeds and animal and seafood varieties to other cities and provinces.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Lê Thanh Liêm, deputy chairman of the city People’s Committee, hailed the achievements of scientists and businesses in creating new seeds and animal brood stock and urged them to develop more production models and seeds and brood stock suitable for local conditions.
Several seminars, conferences and orchid and bonsai competitions will be held on the sidelines of the event.
The expo, organised by the department at the Biotechnology Centre in District 12, will run until June 26.
Source: VNS. Date: 2017-06-23
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Agriculture expo expected to draw Chinese investors
More than 1,000 Chinese investors and businessmen will soon come to Cambodia to seek investment partnerships with their Cambodian counterparts during the inaugural International Agriculture Products and Expository conference on Koh Pich Island.
The inaugural event is set for June 25 to 28 and expo organizer Bridget Lau, president of the US-International Federation for Supporting Small and Medium Enterprises, said 800 Chinese companies from 30 provinces in China will bring more than 8,000 pieces of agriculture equipment to showcase in Cambodia.
“Through this expo, we want the world to know about the Cambodian agriculture sector,” she said yesterday during a press briefing on the upcoming conference. “We strongly hope that Cambodian agricultural products will have more market access to the globe after the expo.”
“Cambodia has a wide range of agricultural products, so we are calling for Chinese investors to invest and purchase agriculture products from Cambodia,” Ms. Lau added, noting that companies from Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam are also attending.
Lim Heng, vice president of the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, said that through this expo, more and more Chinese companies will partner with Cambodian companies to produce and process agricultural products to export to China and other countries.
“We don’t want to bring goods from China to sell in the Cambodian market; we want to have factories here to produce and process agricultural products for export,” he said.
Mao Minea, director of the department of agricultural extension at the Ministry of Agriculture, said the government supports the expo, just as it supports the sector.
He said the government has strategies to develop and boost the agriculture sector by building a 14.5-meter deep-sea port, lowering the electricity tariff, and developing airports for transportation.
Mr Minea added that Cambodia exported about 257,637 tonnes of rice in the first five months of 2017, up 10 percent compared to the first five months of 2016.
The government has also set up a taskforce to monitor commodity prices to protect people’s living standards, he said.
Commerce Minister Pan Sorasak will lead the taskforce with officials from relevant departments in the ministry.
The taskforce will study and collect data related to production, cost and supply chain capacity, including the commodity price of prioritised products such as rice, fish, chicken, pork, gas, diesel and cassava.
Source: Khmer Times. Date: 2017-06-22
Australia temporarily suspends Vietnamese shrimp import ban
Australian government authorities have lifted the ban on uncooked Vietnamese shrimp product import, allowing wild shrimp caught in Australia to be processed in Vietnam, before re-entering the Australian market.
The decision was made after the Australia’s Department of Agriculture and Water Resources received written confirmation by the National Agro-Forestry-Fisheries Quality Assurance Department (NAFIQAD) under Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development that “it can meet conditions included in the updated health certificate.”
The Vietnamese department announced “it will be accepting permit applications for uncooked Australian wild caught shrimp exported to Vietnam for processing and re-imported into Australia from 15 June 2017.”
The department also said its “biosecurity import condition database system has been updated to reflect the new requirements” from the Australian Agriculture Department.
Import permit applications for Australian wild shrimp processed in countries other than Vietnam“will be accepted once the competent authorities in these countries provide assurance that they meet Australia’s new import conditions,” stated the Agriculture Department.
This determination has helped lift the temporary ban made by Australia in January on shrimp exports from Asian countries, including Vietnam, on worries about the white spot outbreak in the country.
In February, the department loosened the ban on dried shrimp, shelf-stable prawn-based food products and other products caught from the exclusive economic zone of Australia as the risk of white spot virus outbreak was low on these products.
In May, Vietnam’s ministries of Industry and Trade and Agriculture and Rural Development urged Australian agencies to consider lifting the ban on Vietnamese shrimp imports, reporting the damage to Vietnam’s shrimp exports to Australia.
According to the Vietnam Trade Office in Australia, this is the seventh largest shrimp market for Vietnam, accounting for 3.6 per cent of Vietnam’s total shrimp exports.
In 2016, Vietnam exported USD 114.6 million worth of shrimp products to Australia, of which processed shrimp made up 78 per cent of the total.
In the last five years, Vietnam has been the biggest shrimp product supplier to Australia and demand for prawn products in the country is forecast to rise.
Source: Khmer Times. Date: 2017-06-22
Chinese remain keen on agricultural investment
Chinese investors and companies remain eager to invest in Australian agriculture, with vineyards, dairy and aquaculture named yesterday as the most popular sectors.
The Agri-Investor forum in Melbourne was told by Matthew Schofield, partner with pioneering Chinese accountancy business ShineWing, that his Chinese clients had not been deterred by reports of anti-Chinese investment sentiment.
Mr Schofield said Chinese investors wanted to be part of the story involving China’s growing demand for high-quality food, with Australia seen as a safe place to invest with high regulatory, biosecurity and environmental standards. A key appeal was that freehold land could be bought in perpetuity.
Mr Schofield described the avalanche of Chinese money in agricultural investment in Australia as “astounding”.
“Our prospective clients want clean and green gold standard (food); I call it the Louis Vuitton syndrome that we must protect at all costs,” Mr Schofield said.
“They want premium brands and think our food quality is fantastic and, like with Louis Vuitton [handbags], they are prepared to pay a significant premium for it.”
Mr Schofield said China’s worst kept secret, that its rivers, soils and water table were heavily polluted, was now out in the open.
He nominated vineyard investment as a continuing “hot area”, in line with the increased consumption of premium wines by wealthy Chinese and the high regard held for Treasury Wine Estates’ Penfold red wine labels.
Mr Schofield tipped the purchase of dairy assets — from farms to infant formula brands and processing plants — as the next wave of Chinese investment, as new import regulations and registration rules to be introduced in early 2018 became clearer and the desire to lock in Australian milk supply remained.
“I think seafood and aquaculture will be the next round; you only have to look at (Chinese companies) buying hotels and casinos around the world and to think about Chinese tourists loving their seafood to see that,” he said.
Former trade minister Andrew Robb, who sits on the board of the joint Chinese-Australian owned Kidman cattle empire and is advising the Seafarms Group on its $2 billion prawn farm project near Kununurra, said business deals between China and Australia were the key to the future.
He said the live export cattle deal recently signed by Hancock’s Gina Rinehart with the Chinese New Hope group, which will see Hancock export up to 800,00 cattle a year to feedlots and abattoirs on an island near Shanghai, was an example of such future agribusiness co-operation.
Source: The Australian Business Review. Date: 2017-06-22
‘Golden offers’ look to draw people back to the countryside
The capital of Hubei province has started a program to allow businesses to flourish in run-down and abandoned villages. Zhou Lihua and Liu Kun report from Wuhan, with Chen Mengwei in Beijing.
At a time when large cities are still sucking in rural residents from across the nation, a major city in Central China is working hard to reverse the trend by encouraging people to move to the countryside.
In April, Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, proposed a program – the “20 Golden Terms”, as it was dubbed by the media – that would allow urban residents to conduct business in the city’s rural areas.
The drive came in response to rapid urbanization which has seen villages in and around the city sucked dry of residents.
According to research conducted by the municipal government, more than 116,000 houses, nearly 16 percent, of the 1,902 villages around the city have been abandoned. By the end of last year, nearly 1 million of Wuhan’s rural residents had moved to the city’s central areas.
Tan Benzhong, director of the Wuhan Municipal Agriculture Committee, said the rising number of empty houses in villages has been caused, in part, by the rapid pace of urbanization.
Some villagers have obtained hukou, or household registration, in Wuhan, while many young people are leaving to look for work in big cities.
When government officials conducted a random survey in 38 villages, they discovered that more than 78 percent of those interviewed were willing to lease their empty homes to gain extra income. There was only one problem – who would rent the properties?
In response, the government came up with the “golden” package, which essentially cleared the way for people who want to make money in the countryside, and promised hard cash encouragements for qualified applicants.
The policy ensures that outsiders enjoy the same business terms as their rural counterparts, no matter which village they choose to invest in. Green lights and express passes will be provided for all application procedures.
The city government is committed to spending large sums to improve the infrastructure, including providing private and public toilets, to ensure that newcomers and tourists enjoy their time in the city’s villages. The final details of the funding arrangements have yet to be released.
Most attractively, entrepreneurs are eligible for cash stipends of as much as 100,000 yuan ($14,700) for undertaking certain types of business, such as agritainment (farm-based entertainment) and agritourism.
Positive expectations
Zhang Qun, chief of the new countryside development department at the Wuhan Municipal Agriculture Committee, said the government has positive expectations for the campaign, mainly because nearly 3 million urban residents, or 30 percent of the population, are age 60 or older in Wuhan.
“Quite a few of these people have both the enthusiasm and financial capability to move to the countryside and enjoy life after retirement,” Zhang said. “If 10 percent of them want to do this, that’s 300,000 people. That could present a huge market opportunity.”
Despite the benefits on offer, Zhang conceded that there are potential problems for tenants, landlords and regulators.
Some tenants are concerned that house owners may not honor long-term agreements and will terminate contracts when they feel like it.
Moreover, others want to buy the houses as an investment, but the current laws only allow outsiders to rent properties for no longer than 20 years.
Some villagers are worried that the tenants will adapt the houses for business purposes to such an extent that they will not be able to live in them in the future.
Some government regulators, especially those in charge of housing, doubt whether people who rent houses for business purposes will abide by the rules and refrain from expanding the properties illegally.
“But one thing is for sure, if your business loses money, the government will not cover your loss. The current policy does not even consider that,” Zhang said.
“Our stipend policy is equal for everybody. We will put our focus on providing guidance in advance. People should act based on their own situations.”
Source: China Daily Date: 2017-06-14
Australia – potential market for Vietnam goods
Australia is a choosy but promising market with large consumption capacity, Vice President of Australia-Vietnam Business Council Cann Lee has said.
He noted that penetrating this market is tough, but maintaining a foothold is even more difficult.
Speaking at a recent Australia and Vietnam investment and trade expo in Hanoi, Lee said a delegation of 70 Australian businesses operating in real estate, finance, environment, mineral and hi-tech agriculture have arrived in Vietnam to seek cooperation opportunities with Vietnamese partners.
Vietnam is the second most attractive market in Southeast Asia to Australian firms, only after Indonesia, due to Vietnam’s political stability and dynamic market, he noted.
Notably, the Vietnamese Government has devised incentives to support enterprises seeking business opportunities in the country.
Bilateral trade has increased in recent years after the two countries joined a free trade agreement signed between Australia, New Zealand and ASEAN in 2009.
In 2016 alone, two-way trade reached 5.26 billion USD, a year-on-year rise of 6.5 percent, according to Vietnam Customs.
Vietnam exported 2.87 billion USD worth of goods to Australia while importing 2.39 billion USD from the market.
As of May 2017, Australia ranked 19th among the total 119 countries and territories investing in Vietnam with 404 projects worth nearly 1.9 billion USD.
Andrew Martin, Managing Director at Moelis said the company recognised the huge investment opportunities in real estate and finance in Vietnam due to the sectors’ stable growth.
Despite huge import demand, many Vietnamese staples have struggled to conquer the Australian market, Lee said, with quality of goods the biggest difficulty for Vietnamese firms.
Director of Hoang Lan Co. Ltd. Nguyen Thi Nga said businesses should follow international standards to meet the requirements of consumers and improve competitiveness and improve the quality management system of factories.
She suggested Vietnamese firms invite experts to inspect the quality of products and bring skilled Australian workers to Vietnam to increase the quality of products and popularise Vietnamese goods in the market.
Australian business representatives advised Vietnam to seek partners in Australia to better understand the host’s law and market to enter the market more easily.
Source: VNA Date: 2017-06-15
Asia emerges as lucrative market for Illinois cattle farmers
There’s growing demand for U.S. beef in Asian markets, and the Illinois Beef Association sees an opportunity for cattle farmers in the state to expand operations as the call for high-quality beef in Japan and South Korea increases.
Reid Blossom, executive vice president of the association, said Japan is one of the best markets for Illinois cattle farmers, and President Donald Trump is working to open the Chinese market for U.S. beef, which would add an additional 1.4 billion potential consumers.
“An increase in exports to the Pacific Rim and Asia will absolutely lead to higher consumer demand and an increase in cattle prices,” Blossom said.
Approximately 15 percent of domestic beef production in Illinois is exported every year, and roughly $275 of the price of an animal in an Illinois feedyard can be attributed to international demand, Blossom said.
“With some of our largest and strongest export markets being Japan and South Korea currently, it’s obvious that those markets are having a very positive impact on cattle farmers in Illinois,” Blossom said.
The cattle population has grown over the past several years. Blossom said that while it’s not tied to market access or international trade, increased trade opportunities are welcome.
Cattle producers operate with the market fundamentals of supply and demand. The way to augment demand is to add more consumers and give them more opportunities to purchase Illinois beef products without changing supply, according to Blossom.
“That increases the price we get for our animals, and so we’ve been very supportive of efforts on the national level to increase market access overseas,” Blossom said.
China has been a target for Illinois cattle farmers for quite some time because it has the largest population in the world, according to Blossom.
Blossom said there are other beneficial opportunities in the future for Illinois cattle farmers.
“Looking further ahead beyond China, we think the European Union is a wonderful, tremendous target to expand access, as is the Middle East and, after the Brexit vote last year, the United Kingdom,” Blossom said.
Source: Illinois News Network. Date: 2017-06-15
UN’s FAO promotes advancements of innovative agro-aquaculture systems to enhance Asian-Pacific growth
The Asia-Pacific region is witnessing considerable advancements and innovative approaches that combine agriculture and aquaculture leading to improved livelihoods for smallholders, according to senior officials from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
While the practice of adding fish to flooded rice paddies was established hundreds of years ago in China, and is now recognised as one of the country’s Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, the approach is being practiced in many other countries around the region. In more recent years, other agro-aquaculture systems have followed, such as mixing shrimps into flooded paddies. The fish eat the pests in the water and in turn the fish excrement fertilises the plants.
Now, FAO and member countries are studying and promoting new innovations in these traditional practices, taking into account varying socio-economic and environmental conditions. Different from traditional integrated fish farming, the innovative integration of agro-aquaculture is characterised by a number of different approaches.
Introducing these methods helps to improve the income of small rice farmers where innovation in agro-aquaculture can easily double the economic return. These can significantly improve productivity from the crop system. For instance, good rice-fish farming practice can increase the rice yield by 20 per cent while producing tonnes of fish and other aquatic animals.
The methods are being introduced at a regional workshop on innovative agro-aquaculture for blue growth in Asia-Pacific with 25 senior government officials from Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Philippines and Viet Nam. The workshop is convened jointly by FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and FAO’s Strategic Programme on Sustainable Agriculture this week in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences (CAFS).
This work is helping to strengthen food systems in order to make them more productive and sustainable, one of FAO’s main strategic objectives.
“In promoting innovative integrated agro-aquacultural systems-such as rice-farming systems to areas where these are still not common practices, it is key to take up a truly multi-stakeholder approach. There is an increasing potential to promote such systems in a number of Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Viet Nam, Bangladesh, Philippines, Lao PDR or Myanmar, but also in other areas of the world. South-South Cooperation is a very appropriate platform to scale up innovative rice-fish and other IAA farming systems,” said Hans Dreyer, Director of FAO’s Agriculture Production and Plant Protection Division.
The participants will also visit field sites and share the status of adoption of different systems/practices among the participant countries, both successes and failures. The country teams are also expected to draft national strategies and develop business plans for scaling up appropriate innovative Agro-Aquaculture farming systems and practices based on the in-depth analysis of major constraints and gaps in each of the individual countries.
Source: FarEasternAgriculture.com Date: 2017-06-15
Forum discusses Vietnam – Japan cooperation in hi-tech farming
A forum on high-tech agricultural cooperation between Vietnam and Japan took place in Ho Chi Minh City on June 8.
The event, the second of its kind this year, aimed at connecting southern enterprises with their Japanese peers and helping Vietnamese high-tech farming centres promote their products and indicate their collaboration needs.
Tu Minh Thien, deputy head of the management board of HCM City’s High-Tech Agricultural Park, said constructive relations between the two countries have brought mutual benefits for their people, with Vietnam seeing more opportunities to export goods to Japan.
Japan is a demanding market with strict requirements on food safety and quality, which is a challenge to Vietnamese firms, he added.
Vietnam has zoned off 29 high-tech industrial parks in 12 provinces and cities, seven of which have been operational in cultivation, aquaculture and animal husbandry. The Vietnamese Government has also issued various incentives and support policies targeting hi-tech agriculture, with the latest being a credit package worth 100 trillion VND (4.4 billion USD).
Representatives of Vietnamese high-tech agricultural parks said they hoped for not only Japanese investment but also cooperation in human resources training, laboratory research and technological transfer.
Participating Japanese firms stressed their willingness towards the cooperation.
They asked the Vietnamese Government to offer more incentives and help them remove barriers when investing in the local high-tech farming, particularly land issues.
As part of the forum, a pact was signed among the management board of the HCM City High-Tech Agricultural Park, Fuji Consulting Japan Co. Ltd, and Nakashima Bussan Co. Ltd. Under the deal, they will pilot the fine-bubble water treatment system and the use of bio-microorganisms in aquaculture.
Source: VNA Date: 2017-06-15
Measures sought for sustainable pepper development
Measures to develop the pepper sector sustainably were discussed at a forum jointly held by the National Agricultural Extension Centre (NAEC) and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Dak Nong on June 7.
Speaking at the event, NAEC Acting Director Tran Van Khoi said that pepper is a key export staple of Vietnam. Last year, the country shipped abroad 177,000 tonnes of pepper, earning 1.42 billion USD. Vietnam’s pepper products have been exported to 95 nations and territories, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s market share.
However, Khoi noted, the sector is facing three major matters that need to be handled: a rapid increase in pepper growing areas, unsustainable cultivation with weaknesses in terms of technology and varieties, and food safety and hygiene.
According to Vice Chairman of the provincial Dak Nong People’s Committee Truong Thanh Tung, the rapid increase of pepper planting areas is resulting in negative impacts which farmers have to suffer, including diseases and a decline in pepper price.
The price of pepper currently stands at around 75,000 VND per kg, equal to only 40 percent of the figure in the same period last year.
Therefore, pepper farmers are easily facing bankruptcy or debts as they have to invest from 350-500 million VND (15,400-22,025 USD) in one hectare.
Therefore, Tung proposed ministries and centrally-run agencies closely control pepper cultivation to produce clean products with stable quality, and enhance connection between major pepper production provinces in terms of planning, production, processing to consumption.
Dr. Nguyen Nhu Hien from the Cultivation Department stressed the need for provinces to boost trade promotion, especially in major and choosy markets such as the US, EU, and Japan.
At the forum, experts shared results of several studies on preventing several diseases, as well as measures to reduce impacts of drought on pepper trees amid climate change.
Source: VNA Date: 2017-06-08
