Connecting production, processing and consumption

(Baonghean) - As a locality with the largest livestock herd in the country, in recent years, along with potential and reasonable policies, the livestock industry in our province has made remarkable progress. However, in order for this important economic sector to develop commensurate with its potential, stronger solutions and policies are needed in restructuring for development.

Promoting advantages, increasing investment attraction

In recent years, although the total livestock herd of our province has tended to increase and decrease slightly, in general, the total livestock output has continuously increased year by year. The number of concentrated industrial livestock farms has also developed. Currently, the whole province has 121 farms meeting the criteria according to the new regulations of the Ministry of Agriculture. In particular, concentrated industrial dairy farming applying high technology continues to develop, exceeding the planned targets in both total herd and total dairy products with nearly 31 thousand heads, total fresh milk output in 2012 reached nearly 60 thousand tons. Many livestock programs and projects have been and are being implemented effectively... However, according to the general assessment, livestock development in Nghe An has not yet achieved the total herd development plan, the summary and evaluation and replication of models are not regular, the problem of environmental treatment in some farms and livestock facilities has not been thoroughly resolved.

According to Mr. Nguyen Cong Hoa - Head of the Animal Husbandry Department, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, in restructuring the animal husbandry industry, our province advocates two parallel methods of animal husbandry. On the one hand, focusing on exploiting and taking advantage of regional and local animal husbandry, building and developing medium and large-scale specialized animal husbandry areas in the form of farms, family farms and industrial animal husbandry areas applying high technology for dairy cows and high-quality beef cattle. Connecting production with the processing, preservation and consumption industry of meat and milk products. At the same time, maintaining the scale and methods of household production, diversifying to suit regional and local conditions, with domestic product groups but with average potential such as pig and poultry products. Increasing income for animal husbandry farmers on the basis of creating conditions for all economic sectors, especially the poor and near-poor in rural areas, people in remote and isolated areas to participate in agricultural growth through support for maintaining production and income.

To achieve that goal, we first need to promote investment attraction, especially business investment to develop livestock farming in the direction of shifting from small-scale, scattered livestock farming to concentrated, industrial-scale livestock farming. In recent years, Nghe An has achieved many important results in attracting investment in the livestock industry, especially dairy farming with two large enterprises, TH and Vinamilk. Currently, Nghe An ranks second in the country, after Ho Chi Minh City, in both total herd size and dairy products. In addition, for the past 7 years, CP Group has maintained regular operations of 17 farms associated with poultry production in the form of processing in Nghe An. For the past two years, this enterprise has continued to invest in supporting the construction of a production chain for foreign pigs, also following the processing linkage method. It has now built 5 sow farms with a scale of 1,200 pigs/farm or more, 5 pig farms with a scale of 500 pigs/batch or more, in which the enterprise supports breeds, techniques, and feed; people take care of the barns. In addition, from the pig farm in Do Luong, Thai Duong Joint Stock Company has also begun to apply a closed linkage form, building satellite pig farms and purchasing products.

Restructuring the livestock industry

However, according to the general assessment, the number of enterprises investing in our province has not yet met the demand and is completely not commensurate with the province's potential. In addition to the dairy farming sector which is considered stable, other livestock sectors such as pigs and poultry are still not commensurate, the number of enterprises investing in production and consumption linkages can only be counted on the fingers and accounts for a very small part, Nghe An has a great strength in beef cattle but has not yet exploited its full potential. According to Mr. Ho Ngoc Sy - Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, attracting enterprises to invest in the livestock sector is very difficult for many reasons. The initial investment capital for building barns and infrastructure is not small, while livestock is an economic sector that is easily affected by many factors, diseases, environmental treatment, especially the output market of livestock products is still uncertain and unstable. To attract businesses to invest, we need to have strong enough incentive policies, create a truly open investment environment, build a system of infrastructure, convenient transportation, and have reasonable planning for livestock farming areas.

In addition to attracting businesses to invest, in restructuring to increase the value of the livestock industry, Nghe An also advocates developing industrial farm, household livestock farming, applying appropriate techniques and technologies to create livelihood opportunities for farmers. Encourage the application of high technology, organize closed production or link between stages in the value chain from breeding, feed production to processing to improve productivity, cut costs, increase efficiency and added value. It can be said that high-tech livestock farming is an inevitable direction in industrial livestock farms. For household livestock farming, it is necessary to build models of good livestock farming practices, safe livestock farming, and apply scientific and technological measures according to the Vietgap livestock farming program. Currently, the Lipsap project is supporting the construction of these models in 4 districts: Nam Dan, Nghi Loc, Dien Chau and Do Luong. In addition, agricultural extension programs are also supporting the development of these models. The goal is that household livestock must meet the requirements of scale, barns, environmental sanitation, disease prevention and treatment processes, and controlled livestock farming.

Another important goal in restructuring the livestock industry is to gradually shift livestock farming from areas with high population density in the plains to areas with low population density in the mountainous and midland regions. Forming livestock farming areas far from cities and residential areas. To achieve this goal, one of the important solutions is to continue to manage and organize the implementation of plans, projects, and replicate the models that the province has issued. In the immediate future, it is necessary to review, adjust, and supplement the key livestock farming planning for buffaloes, cows, pigs, and the planning of feed material areas for TH Company's dairy cows. At the same time, develop a poultry farming plan and a plan to develop concentrated livestock farms. Doing this will bring many benefits, solve the problem of concentrated livestock farming, and remove areas from residential areas, thereby completely solving the problem of environmental pollution, contributing to disease prevention, and at the same time creating favorable conditions for applying technical measures to increase productivity, creating concentrated raw material and product areas.

Breed improvement

In recent years, Nghe An has achieved quite basic achievements in creating breed sources to serve the livestock industry such as the program to improve cattle breeds in the direction of Zebuization, improve buffalo breeding by artificial insemination of Muhra buffalo semen, support good quality male buffaloes for cross-breeding to avoid inbreeding, improve pig breeds in the direction of lean herd... In the coming time, for beef cattle, we will still apply two methods: cross-breeding and cross-breeding on local cattle, for cross-breeding, we will still implement the Zebuization program, Zebu cross-breeding with local cattle, in cross-breeding, we will use high-yield beef cattle breeds to mate with Zebu cross-bred cattle. For mountainous areas where artificial insemination cannot be applied, Zebu cross-bred males and H'Mong bulls will be used to cross-breed and improve local cattle herds. At the same time, we will maintain two good buffalo breeds of Nghe An, Thanh Chuong buffalo and Phu Quy buffalo, by cross-breeding between these two regions to avoid inbreeding. In addition, we have now used Muhra buffalo semen to apply artificial insemination to breed local buffalo herds. For pigs, we follow the leaner approach in two ways. One is to develop a purebred foreign pig herd, applied to family farms and ranches, currently the foreign pig herd accounts for 10% of the province's total pig herd. At the same time, gradually increase the proportion of foreign blood in the local pig herd by crossbreeding and improved crossbreeding.

Dairy farming at TH Group.

There are many barriers

However, there are still many difficulties in successfully restructuring this important economic sector. In fact, although there is a general master plan for the development of the livestock industry in the whole province, which clearly identifies each livestock area, there is no specific planning for each locality, the farms and ranches are all developing spontaneously and are mostly located in residential areas. According to local leaders, the most difficult thing in building and implementing livestock planning is the concentrated land area for planning, followed by the capital source for building infrastructure.

People hardly want to invest, first of all because the competitive advantage in livestock products is low, while the investment capital for concentrated livestock farming is not small, so people are not interested. Along with that, the habit of raising livestock in a way that takes root, even in large-scale farms and ranches, most of them take advantage of raising livestock in their home gardens or rented and used areas, and do not want to move to another place to invest in building new barns from scratch. According to agricultural experts, in order to do this, localities need to be more determined and make more efforts in planning concentrated livestock farming areas, considering this an indispensable task if they want to develop an industrial, modern, highly efficient and stable livestock farming industry. In addition, the State also needs to have appropriate support mechanisms and policies to promote this issue.

Phu Huong