Dragon fruit cultivation in Long An province (Photo: VNA) Hoan said it was vital to offer incentives and loansto farmers who use sustainable and climate-friendly production processes.
Millions ofsmall-scale farming households, which are the most criticallyaffected by climate change, need access to innovative technologiesand practices as well as market information.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global supply chains,posing risks to farmers and exporters of farm produce. The mostaffected products have been fresh fruits, vegetables and aquaticproducts, according to the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
To cope with the outbreak, major firms including the Loc Troi Group,Vingroup, PAN Group and Hoang Anh Gia Lai, have invested in high-techapplications.
Firms are also working with cooperatives and farming households to create“clean and safe food sources”. They are training farmers in brandmanagement and offering technical and seed support toimprove quality control during processing and before harvesting.
In the future, the Mekong Delta will face a growing populationand rising urbanisation. Pollution, landslides, coastal erosionand loss of natural forest land are all expected to increase.
Because arable land and harvests will shrink worldwide, productivity and asufficient supply of quality food must increase, while natural resourcesremain protected.
Since more than 70 percent of Vietnam’s agricultural products are from 22million smallholder farmers, local agri-businesses should not depend solely onmajor corporations to promote innovative solutions, experts have said.
Other challenges include farmers’ limited capital. Switching to high-techagriculture requires a considerable up-front investment.
Another major issue is market and consumer confidence. Building brands andwinning customer confidence are essential for Vietnamese brands so they cantake advantage of major export markets like the EU under the new EU-VietnamFree Trade Agreement (EVFTA).
According to the White Book on Vietnamese Businesses 2020,the Mekong Delta currently has more than 55,000 enterprises, accounting foronly 7.26 percent of the country’s total number.
Most of the businesses in the Mekong Delta region are small and medium-sized,and most lack long-term business strategies in technologyinvestment, human resources training, and branding.
Amid deep global integration, Vietnamese products face strongcompetition from foreign-made goods.
Solutions must be identified, especially for smallholder farmers, to applytechnology so they can enter mass markets. But it will take time to changefarmers’ methods that have existed for hundreds of years, experts said.
Nguyen Minh Hai, deputy chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham), saidthat exporters should continue to take advantage of the EVFTA toboost agricultural products such as rice, seafood and fruit.
As many as 39 Vietnamese Geographical Indications (GIs) exist in the EU,providing an adequate framework for further promotion of imports ofquality products, he said.
The EU maintains some of the highest sanitary, phytosanitary, origintracing and sustainable standards in the world. Hai said thatexporters should raise local standards and develop new value-addedproducts to compete internationally, particularly in the EU with its populationof 450 million.
The elimination of tariffs under the EVFTA is expected to benefit farmproduce from the Mekong Delta, but technical barriers to trade willbe raised, imposing challenges for products and services.
The Mekong Delta region contributes 54 percent of rice output, 70 percent ofaquaculture output and 60 percent of fruit output to the country’stotal output./.
VNA
