Why Consumers Do not “Believe” Vegetables?

After more than 6 years of implementation of Vietgap (good agricultural practice) to date, only over 2,000 hectares of total 830,000 hectares of vegetables produced annually are certified with Vietagra. What is the reason why clean vegetable production is not developing?

This is a question that was discussed at the workshop on Safe Vegetable Production held on 9-12 in Hanoi.

Not create trust with consumers

Vietgap is a good agricultural production practice developed and issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) since the beginning of 2008. Up to now it has been over 6 years, but the country has only about 2000 hectares A total of 830,000 hectares of vegetables are grown.

Mr. Tran Manh Chien, Director of Uncle Tom’s Clean Shop chain, said that the demand for fresh vegetables is very big, but despite appearing for a long time, only 4 new stores in Hanoi have been introduced.

“We have difficulty in supervising clean vegetable production cooperatives. To ensure the source of safe vegetables, Uncle Tom has to send engineers supervised directly in the field, organize tours to customers to visit … Therefore, vegetables prices of Uncle Tom Tum usually 2 times higher than the market. Mr. Chien said.

Nguyen Thanh Luu, General Director of Hanoi Fruit and Vegetable Trading Center, has another look. According to him, the vegetable production sector is not large because the majority of vegetable production facilities are small, the capacity of business management and market access is very low, the resources are very limited. In the market, it is difficult to connect to a large value chain. Meanwhile, the agricultural value chain of Vietnam has too many intermediate stages, both in input and output, the production facilities have to buy high input prices and sell low output products. And the final price to the consumer is not competitive.

In particular, according to Nguyen Thanh Luu, the trade between the chains in the agricultural value chain is now “extremely” poorly transparent so it is almost impossible to trace the origin, this is the reason leading to people Consumers can not distinguish between false and turned away from clean farm produce.

Not just supervising farmers

Dao Duy Tam, deputy director of the Hanoi Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that consumers do not have confidence in clean vegetables in part because of their businesses. Businesses mainly do business and invest less in producing clean vegetables. There are not enough sources to buy vegetables to make up to maximize profits.

If businesses invest in agricultural materials for farmers, participate in the production of closed process and produce products, then the market of vegetables is not as bad today.

At the same time, regulators not only monitor farmers’ production processes, but also supervise transportation. Many businesses buy 1 ton of vegetables, on the transport stuffed 3-4 tons of vegetables.

In addition, they must supervise both preliminary processing and processing to avoid shortage of products to buy other places for.

In this regard, Mr. Tran Xuan Dinh, Deputy Director General of Cultivation Department of MARD, said that the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Department of Crop Production has piloted the basic vegetable production model (Basic GAP). The process of producing clean vegetables according to Basic GAP is much simpler than the VietGap standard set by the Ministry, as only 26 out of 65 VietGap criteria, but quality of vegetables still meet the standard. Therefore, Basic GAP is more applicable.

At the same time, this JICA project is also piloting internal monitoring. That is the formation of cooperative groups in the farmer group. They have the same will, the same idea, produce together and monitor each other. At the same time, the cooperative will create resonance, and the label will be recognized by the consumer.

According to TBKTSG