Good agricultural practices (GAP) are considered the main strategy fordeveloping Vietnam's farming. They involve turning out safe andhigh-quality produce that can be certified free of any dangerous toxins.

Clean farming techniques are still a noveltyin the country, despite the known presence of war-time chemicals and thecontinued use of sprays and even fertilisers that can contaminateproduce.

Slowly, throughout Vietnam, somefarmers, influenced by a growing demand for "safe" fruit and vegetables,are switching back to traditional methods which are usually muchhealthier.

This includes using more farm-mademulch and trying to develop ways of growing crops without having toresort to chemical sprays.

The end result isproduce that can be "certified" to be safe and free from all poisons.The boxes of produce and sometimes the individual items of fruit aregiven labels stating that they were grown in toxin-free soil and withoutharmful sprays to repel insects.

Already inHanoi there are a dozen or so organic food outlets. Some of them aretopped up daily with first class produce, some of it co-produced byFrench nationals on farms in nearby hill regions.

However, the introduction of the so-called "new" GAP system in Vietnam has met a series of obstacles.

This was revealed at a recent conference on GAP and the trend towardsgrowing safe fruit and vegetables held in Hanoi.

Acting director of the agriculture ministry's Cultivation DepartmentPham Dong Quang said that the ministry had set up a legal framework andan itinerary to apply GAP based on the Law on Food Safety issued in2011.

Farmers wanting to join the scheme willhave to change some of their farming habits, even if the cost of doingso is more expensive.

Nguyen Thi Kim Oanh, headof the Hanoi Safe Food and Vegetable trading floor transaction division,said there was a great demand for safe vegetables, but little was beingproduced, despite much investment.

Oanh saidslack management had even led to poor quality fruit and vegetables beingsold at big supermarkets, including Big C and Metro.

"This seriously affects customers' belief in food quality. Once theyare disappointed, they will lose interest in trying to buy safe, qualityproduce, even if they have the money," she said.

She added that some farmers had been growing quality produce, but they did not know where or how to market it.

Nguyen Thi Tan Loc, an expert of the Vegetables Research Institute,said that places for cleaning and bundling the vegetables were limited.

Most of them did not have modern productionlines or equipment to handle big orders for export - and forsupermarkets and restaurant chains.

Loc said that seed for quality crops often had to be imported at high expense.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is developingpolicies to help farmers resolve their difficulties in selling safevegetables, such as encouraging social organisations and co-operativesto set up production chains to take care of the whole process.

Vietnam has nearly 823,700ha of land growing about 14 milliontonnes of vegetables per year. About 85 percent is for domestic use andthe remainder for export.

Last year, more than570 VietGAP certificates were issued to enterprises for producingvegetables, fruit, rice, tea and coffee.-VNA