Non-timber forest products, untapped potential

With over 14 million hectares of forest, non-timber forest products (NTFPs) have been associated with the livelihoods of millions of farmers involved in forestry for generations. However, exploiting the potential and developing some NTFP products into large industries is still a difficult problem.

Many types of NTFPs are valuable medicinal materials, with great potential for the pharmaceutical industry.

Diverse products

In order to review the current situation, grasp the difficulties and solve practical problems of farmers working in the forest sector in the process of exploiting and producing NTFP products, last weekend, the National Agricultural Extension Center organized the Agricultural Extension Forum @ Agriculture in Hoa Binh province.

Many issues surrounding the exploitation of the potential of NTFPs have been analyzed and dissected by many delegates who are experts and managers. NTFPs are all products exploited from forests that are not timber, and are extremely diverse, including many groups such as medicinal plants (cinnamon, star anise, cardamom, morinda, licorice, etc.); food groups (honey, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, cardamom, etc.); groups of processed raw materials (pine, bamboo, rattan, etc.) According to the National Agricultural Extension Center, as of 2014, the whole country has about 36/63 provinces and cities planting and exploiting NTFPs with an area of ​​over 1.63 million hectares, accounting for 13% of the forested land area. Of which, the NTFP area that can be exploited from natural forests is over 1.1 million hectares; the planted NTFP area is approximately 470 thousand hectares. Among NTFP products, the group of processed raw materials such as bamboo, reed, and bamboo accounts for the majority with over 47% (equivalent to nearly 770 thousand hectares); rattan of all kinds accounts for 22.4%; pine resin exploitation accounts for 255 thousand hectares (accounting for 15.6%) and cinnamon accounts for nearly 81 thousand hectares, accounting for 4.9% of the total area.

Most notably, the area of ​​pure bamboo in natural forests as well as bamboo forests has tended to increase and remained stable at 700 - 800 thousand hectares in recent years, of which 37 provinces and cities across the country have formed concentrated bamboo forests with a scale of around 10 thousand hectares. In addition, trees such as pine, tung, cinnamon, anise, chestnut, agarwood and some medicinal plants such as cardamom, amomum, morinda, Ngoc Linh ginseng... have also been actively developed by people with concentrated areas in the direction of commodity production. This is an abundant source of raw materials for export.

According to the General Department of Forestry, the results of the investigation at the northern border gates show that Vietnam currently has no less than 3,000 types of exported products through the Chinese market, of which the most abundant group of handicraft products is about 2,000 types. Of which, bamboo exports are about 600 million trees/year; rattan from 60 - 80 thousand tons/year. Bamboo, rattan, and sedge mats account for the majority of exports and remain at about 200 - 250 million USD/year and have been increasing continuously in recent years.

At the forum, experts and scientists listened to and answered hundreds of questions from farmers from localities in Hoa Binh province related to mechanisms, policies, and orientations for NTFP development; varieties, production techniques, product output, and medicinal effects of many NTFPs such as moneywort, Gynostemma pentaphyllum, Morinda officinalis; black ginseng; and new NTFPs such as macadamia...

Not only the Chinese market, Vietnam's NTFP products are now exported to about 90 countries, of which the Japanese and Taiwanese markets have a high and stable market share.

Aiming for 800 million USD export

Along with many programs to support the development of NTFPs, in the period of 2011 - 2015, through national agricultural extension projects, a series of projects have been implemented, in which some NTFP projects have been and are bringing high efficiency such as: The project of planting medicinal NTFPs, with a scale of 180 hectares in 3 provinces of Bac Giang, Thai Nguyen and Ha Giang, with a profit of over 230 million VND/ha; Project of planting NTFPs for food in Lao Cai, Lai Chau and Yen Bai with a scale of 213 hectares; Project of planting rattan for raw materials in 11 provinces...

In 2009, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development approved a project to plan craft villages associated with NTFP raw material areas, with the goal of increasing the export turnover of NTFP products to 700-800 million USD by 2020 (compared to about 200 million USD at present). Although the potential is still large, the implementation of this goal will require a breakthrough in practice, because NTFP currently does not have a separate policy, but is mainly integrated into general forest protection and development programs and projects.

According to Mr. Tran Van Khoi, Deputy Director of the National Agricultural Extension Center, in addition to the lack of policies for NTFPs, forest growers' awareness of NTFPs is still very limited, they do not even understand the concept of what a non-timber forest product is, so they are still very unclear about policies and laws for NTFPs, leading to not being able to access forestry support policies to develop NTFPs.

In addition, many NTFP products are currently medicinal materials, used by the health sector for processing, but the agricultural sector is in charge of production. Meanwhile, there is still no common voice between the health sector and the agricultural sector to connect with each other. "Especially regarding the issue of medicinal plant varieties, the agricultural sector has not yet focused on and recognized any new varieties, this is a weakness that needs attention in the coming time", Mr. Khoi emphasized....

According to NongNghiep.vn