Nghe An agricultural exports are still modest, many valuable products have not been upgraded.

Efforts to bring agricultural products to the world market

With the goal of bringing Vietnamese agricultural products to the world market, Vilaconic Joint Stock Company has been actively participating in activities connecting supply and demand, promoting the export of strategic goods to properly approach markets with high standards such as: EU, USA, Russia, Japan... This is also a way for customers to pay more attention to Vietnamese agricultural products.

Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hung - Assistant General Director of Vilaconic Joint Stock Company said: In the first 10 months of the year, Vilaconic exported about 62,000 tons of rice with a turnover of 40 million USD to more than 50 countries around the world, of which 38,000 tons of rice were exported to the Philippines worth 22.8 million USD. Recently, we joined the Food Association to visit the Philippines. Recently, during the visit to the Philippines, in addition to the main rice product, we expanded the market for high-quality rice, other agricultural products such as pepper, tapioca starch, etc.

This is an important opportunity to connect and promote the brand to the Philippines market - one of Vietnam's leading strategic partners in rice export. Vilaconic has successfully promoted its products, affirmed the Vietnamese rice brand and committed to promoting bilateral trade.

For a long time, with the efforts of departments, businesses, and production facilities, many OCOP agricultural products such as lotus tea, turmeric starch, etc. have reached customers in the EU, Russia, and Thailand markets. At meetings with foreign counselors organized by the Department of Industry and Trade, many facility owners have approached and researched the market to bring their products to the world.

For example, Hadalifa cereal powder product. Realizing the potential of Vietnamese agricultural land and agricultural products - especially cereals, in August 2020, Mr. Hoang Xuan Tuan and Ms. Phan Thi Lien in Nghi Hoa ward, Cua Lo town, devoted all their efforts to building the Hadalifa nutritious cereal brand.

Ms. Phan Thi Lien - Director of Hadalifa Company said that after more than 4 years of operation, the company has cooperated with cooperatives to build a 240ha clean raw material area to ensure proactive raw materials, grown and cared for according to clean agricultural product standards in districts in the province, including: Black beans, green beans, black sesame, white beans, red beans, royal beans, glutinous millet..., combined with some high-quality agricultural seeds in the Central Highlands provinces: Cashews, almonds, macadamia... and some imported seeds. Along with improving product quality, the company is also struggling to find output, present at most conferences connecting supply and demand of goods in and outside the province, bringing products to domestic and foreign markets. Currently, the company's products are cereal powder produced from clean agricultural products in the province, exported to Thailand, Russia and continue to approach some other markets.

“To support exports, Nghe An province aims to have 80% of Nghe An’s typical and unique products participate in domestic and foreign e-commerce trading floors, including agricultural products. One of the key tasks is to participate in online supply-demand connection conferences, open booths for typical, key, OCOP, and major export products of Nghe An on prestigious markets around the world. At the same time, instruct producers on how to harvest, process raw materials, preserve, package, etc. so that the products meet the best standards for export,” said the leader of the Department of Industry and Trade.

In recent years, from the potential, advantages as well as efforts, incentive and support policies, the province's agricultural investment attraction sector has achieved remarkable results. Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development - Vo Thi Nhung shared: From the province's efforts, projects with investment capital up to hundreds of millions of USD have been implemented, contributing to the formation of a modern, high-quality agriculture with large scale and high value. In addition to Vinamilk's industrial-scale dairy farming projects, TH Group produces milk, processes purified water, fruit juice, and grows clean vegetables, and has had many more investment projects in the fields of forestry, tea, pineapple, orange growing, medicinal herbs, livestock, etc.

Agricultural exports are lacking and weak.

However, looking at the annual export turnover figures, it shows that agricultural products are absent, and the turnover of this product is also very low. The competitiveness of agricultural, forestry and fishery products is still not high, agricultural, forestry and fishery products are mainly pre-processed, raw materials are scattered, some raw materials have to be imported from other provinces, and the uniformity of raw materials is low...

Data from the Department of Industry and Trade shows that the total export turnover of goods in 10 months is estimated at 2,640 million USD, an increase of 33% over the same period in 2023, but agricultural products are not numerous and unsustainable.

This year, rice export turnover reached 42 million USD, an increase of nearly 100% due to the narrowing of the world's rice supply, many major supplying countries were forced to ban and limit exports... leading to an advantage for Vietnam's rice exports. In addition, cassava and cassava flour reached nearly 70 million USD, an increase of 40%; dairy cows: 2.4 million USD, a sharp increase (same period only 278 thousand USD). Meanwhile, many agricultural products had a decrease in turnover such as: Processed fruits and fruit juices: 19 million USD, down 1/2; seafood 86 million USD, down 40%; tea reached 2 million USD, down 1/2.

Nghe An is a large, populous province, mainly producing agriculture and is also a province with many famous agricultural products known to many domestic and foreign consumers, such as: Thanh Chuong pickled jackfruit, Nam Dan soy sauce, Vinh oranges, Gay tea, tapioca starch, lotus peanuts... However, in reality, not many businesses invest in agriculture. According to a synthesis from the Department of Planning and Investment, from 2021 to early 2024, there were 24 projects in the agricultural sector out of a total of 373 projects that were granted investment policies and certificates, accounting for only 6.43% of projects; total capital of VND 3,591,399 billion/VND 123,179,585 billion, accounting for less than 3%.

Because agricultural production depends heavily on the weather, it is highly risky and slow to recover capital. Meanwhile, with the harsh climate typical of Nghe An, along with the increasingly severe climate change, agriculture always faces uncertainty. Not only vegetables and fruits, but businesses growing other crops such as rubber and tea have also suffered many times due to drought and storms. The fact that businesses are not interested in investing in agriculture is also the reason why rice production in Nghe An is still mainly serving the consumption needs of the people, and is rarely consumed in supermarkets, large distribution systems and especially for export.

Regarding lotus peanut products, although Nghe An has a fairly famous brand, this product has long been absent from the province's agricultural export gold list. The product is mainly in the form of processed peanuts for export and establishments and households that purchase, process and consume peanuts in the province. Recently, vegetables and fruits have also developed quite well in some localities in the province, but the connection between households is still sometimes and in some places not good, leading to contract breaches...

It is also because the processing industry has not been invested in that the growth rate of total export turnover of agricultural, forestry and fishery products is modest, only reaching 3-4%/year.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, by 2030, Vietnam's agricultural, forestry and fishery processing industry is expected to be among the top 10 countries in the world, with sufficient processing capacity to meet agricultural production requirements. To achieve this goal, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development aims to organize production linkages in the value chain of production - processing and consumption of agricultural products to improve the ability to supply raw materials for processing, ensuring sufficient quantity and quality, reasonable and stable prices for all products.

In particular, developing clusters linking production - processing and consumption of agricultural products in localities and regions with large agricultural output, convenient transportation, labor, logistics, with the potential to become growth drivers for the whole region. In addition, selecting "locomotive" enterprises with sufficient capacity in terms of capital, science and technology and market to lead; perfecting policy mechanisms to create a favorable investment and business environment... are considered key solutions.