Agriculture still pays little attention to the consumer market.

Experts believe that management agencies are focusing on promoting production and increasing supply, while paying little attention to the agricultural product consumption market, and this is the main cause of the crises of excess pork and watermelon.

Economist, Dr. Dang Kim Son, former Director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agricultural and Rural Development (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) emphasized this as a solution to the current pork "crisis".

Dr. Dang Kim Son believes that we are overemphasizing production development and paying little attention to the consumer market. Photo: Internet.

At the recent Government meeting, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked the authorities to study solutions to avoid a recurrence of sharp price drops in agricultural products such as pork, watermelon, etc. In particular, the Prime Minister emphasized market solutions, not allowing farmers to passively follow the market, leading to huge losses like in pig farming today. Even the development of high-tech agriculture needs to pay special attention to the consumer market.

According to Dr. Dang Kim Son, we have not yet solved the problem at its root, because if we had solved it, the oversupply crises would not have happened continuously. The fact that Chinese traders oppressed and suddenly stopped buying is not the main reason, because for any market, if the authorities still maintain the current management method, it is inevitable that the "bad scenario" will repeat itself.

The expert said that in many economic sectors today, the management methods of the authorities still do not have many breakthrough differences compared to the planned economic period, especially in regulating and making economic policies. "Entering the stage of building a modern market mechanism, we are still too focused on the goal of how to ensure economic growth, how to develop production, in short, only worrying about developing supply," said Mr. Dang Kim Son.

This is reflected in the organizational structure. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, as well as other economic ministries, most of the departments, offices, and institutes are in charge of managing and promoting production, but only a few units are in charge of sales and market development, and almost no one is in charge of market research. Regarding human resources, it is similar, most of the staff in the industry are production engineers, very few have expertise in post-harvest, consumption, and market areas.

“Therefore, right from the stage of building strategies, policies, planning, organizing implementation, statistics, reporting, to evaluating results, it seems that we are overemphasizing supply promotion. We only care about “meeting targets”, “on time”, “correct techniques”, ensuring area without paying attention to “correct demand”, closely maintaining prices, ensuring pre-sale sales. The whole industry is boosting production, and localities are also chasing agricultural output data to evaluate achievements. Currently, the production scale of many products has exceeded the planned area and we have no way to regulate it. “This will of course lead to oversupply”, Mr. Dang Kim Son affirmed.

Mr. Dang Kim Son suggested that a constructive state needs to create an environment that can both promote the advantages of the market mechanism and overcome its shortcomings, while at the same time creating conditions for economic sectors to proactively make decisions and take responsibility for production and business. The issue of "what to plant, what to raise? How to plant, how to raise?", officials do not need to intervene because in the end, if the business fails, the farmers and businessmen will be the only ones to suffer.

Scientists, experts, and agricultural extension officers only “advise”, not direct. According to Mr. Son, if the market mechanism operates effectively, the market itself will self-adjust in the face of unusual developments. The State provides complete and timely information, and producers and traders will use that information to make decisions in the most prudent and reasonable way, thereby minimizing damage to the economy and to each producer.

“What people need most from the government right now is to help them research the market, provide them with information and guidance on the market, such as standards, market policies, distribution channels of other countries, etc. That is beyond their capacity and responsibility. But currently there are almost no specialized organizations responsible for answering those questions,” said Mr. Dang Kim Son.

Mr. Dang Kim Son proposed that it is time to focus on forming agencies responsible for market research, product lines and market information systems for Vietnamese farmers and businessmen. Research results are widely published and easy to understand to help people proactively make investment decisions, reduce or expand business scale, and adjust industries.

With this important task, Dr. Dang Kim Son emphasized: Market research organizations cannot use bureaucratic methods to manage science and technology topics. In the market mechanism, information is an important input for production, the information flow must flow continuously, research must follow the requirements of production and business, farmers and businesses must be customers. There must be a specific mechanism for this activity if the science budget is still used for investment.

Pork supply has been oversupplied across the country recently. Photo: Phu Huong

The best solution is to apply a diversified organizational model in the form of public-private partnership (PPP). “The State must do basic, non-profit information research for the majority of farmers, while the remaining information that brings profit and “can make money” should be given the right to businesses to participate.” This principle is especially effective in the context of limited government budget resources and the preferential official development assistance (ODA) capital from other countries is gradually shrinking as Vietnam has become a middle-income country. PPP is considered an effective solution to attract and empower the private sector to participate in investing in market information – a type of public service that is in great need today.

“We have studied and learned many good organizational models, and are ready to start organizing the necessary forces from the experiences of other countries. With the current situation, if these units are built with enough capacity, focused on investment, developed strongly enough, and have a reasonable operating mechanism, after a few years they can be strong enough to build a reliable market information system for producers and traders, contributing to the industry an important tool to solve the current problem of oversupply,” Mr. Son believes.

According to Chinhphu.vn