Organic agricultural production is moving towards civilized production.

(Baonghean) - That was the sharing of Ms. Thai Huong - Chairwoman of TH Group at the International Forum on Organic Agriculture recently organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. At the forum, she also recommended that the Government quickly approve a set of regulations and standards for organic agricultural production in Vietnam.

Ms. Thai Huong speaks at the International Forum on Organic Agriculture. Photo TH

Organic farming will not follow the trend

Speaking at the forum, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc affirmed that organic agriculture is an important part of Vietnam's agricultural production and that Vietnamese agriculture must be successful for the country's industrialization and modernization to be successful.

Affirming that Vietnam has many products that can develop organic agriculture, the Prime Minister emphasized the need to form a clean agriculture, clean food for nearly 100 million Vietnamese people and export to the world. However, besides the advantages and outstanding significance of organic agriculture, non-organic agriculture, with high productivity and large output in the coming years, will continue to play a role in ensuring national food security and cannot be overlooked.

Regarding the issue of what is the appropriate ratio for developing organic agriculture, the Prime Minister expressed that organic agriculture will not follow the trend but will have to orientate to find markets and development goals in the more distant future. The important goal is to form an ecosystem for developing organic agriculture, an organic agricultural culture in rural areas and among farmers. That culture cannot be like “two pigsties, two rows of vegetables”, but rather the ethics of farmers.

At the Forum, the Prime Minister also assigned the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to develop a project on organic agriculture development for the 2018-2025 period, with a vision to 2035, to submit to the Prime Minister for approval in early 2018.

A corner of TH's herbal farm in Yen Thanh.

Commitment to the business community will last over time

Determined to build a clean consumer ecosystem, a sustainable organic agricultural production ecosystem to create fairness and civilization in commodity production, Ms. Thai Huong believes that the nature of an economy is commodity production, and to have a sustainable economy, the strength of commodity production must be the foundation.

Currently, the government is demanding integrity, fairness, and transparency in production, so we need to soon pass a set of national product standards and product criteria.

Ms. Thai Huong also cited that the current difficulties in the Vietnamese organic market come from unhealthy competition between businesses, competing to show off products and advertise, leading to high prices. Therefore, according to her, the Government needs to quickly approve a set of criteria for organic product standards in Vietnam. In addition, the commitment of businesses to organic production and clean production is still the most important. When businesses commit and demonstrate social responsibility, they will last over time.

Accepting the opinions, the Prime Minister agreed that it is necessary to soon build an organic agricultural production process according to international standards, and establish a strict, transparent and effective inspection system so that Vietnamese products can have prestige and gain the trust of the world market.

As a business that is at the forefront of the world’s organic production trends and a pioneer in large-scale, systematic organic agricultural production when applying international standards, at the forum, Ms. Thai Huong said that doing organic economics (ie organic agricultural production) is moving towards the most civilized production. Therefore, the Chairman of TH Group also expressed to the Prime Minister his desire to be an investment consultant and financial consultant to produce organic goods for the herbal sector.

According to her, organic herbal cultivation will be carried out in two ways: “One is to exploit directly from the natural environment; Two is to plant around the edge of the forest and the raw products will be purchased by TH Group, processed to help increase the value of the products, contributing to turning this field into a spearhead, creating a storage area to preserve and develop Vietnamese herbs” - she suggested.

The cows eat completely organic food at TH Farm.

Developing organic agricultural production

According to statistics up to the end of 2015 of FiBL (Organic Agriculture Research Institute), organic agricultural production has now appeared in 179 countries, concentrated in Australia, Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa. In Vietnam, organic agricultural production is gradually developing. The area of ​​organic farming and breeding in our country in 2015 reached more than 76.6 thousand hectares, products are consumed domestically and exported to international markets such as Japan, Germany, England, America, Korea, Russia, Singapore, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy...

Not out of the general trend, with the motto of sustainable development, for the health of the community, TH Group is currently focusing on projects to build a green, clean, natural, and environmentally friendly consumer ecosystem.

Along with dairy products and vegetables, TH Group continues to apply organic production standards to other food products. In Nghe An, TH has medicinal herb and vegetable farms producing according to organic agriculture.

According to the assessment of the leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, TH Group is one of the pioneering enterprises in building organic agricultural production processes combined with the application of the most modern high technology in our country today.

Since 2013, TH Group has started to implement organic production according to USDA-NOP standards of the US Department of Agriculture and EC 834/2007 of the European Union at FVF Vegetable Farm (14.7ha) and TH Medicinal Farm (20ha) in Nghia Dan and Yen Thanh districts (Nghe An). On December 17, 2015, Control Union granted USDA-NOP and EC 834/2007 organic certification to 37 types of clean vegetables and 5 types of herbs of TH; 5 organic herbal ingredients including gac fruit, pennywort, persimmon leaves, persimmons and passionflower have been exported to the US market to produce the Total Happiness Naturals product line under the TH brand.

Currently, TH Group has built the largest organic herd of cows and calves in Vietnam with a total herd of nearly 1,000 cows, an area of ​​328 hectares of pasture and organic corn, and an output of 1.5 million liters of raw organic fresh milk per year. Organic fresh milk processed at TH Fresh Milk Factory is strictly controlled in quality according to international standards ISO 22000: 2005, 9001: 2008 and International Standards on food safety BRC.

In particular, in early September 2017, the group's TH True Milk organic milk product was voted the Best New Product at the 2017 International Food Exhibition in the Russian Federation. In addition to the TH true MILK organic fresh milk product, last October, TH also used organic raw fresh milk to process the new TH true MILK Sterilized Fresh Milk product TOPKID Formula - a pioneer product in the fresh milk formula segment specifically for children in Vietnam.

Phu Huong