China's agriculture sector is attracting growing investment amid government efforts to push integrated development in rural areas, official data showed on Thursday.

In the first three quarters, China's agriculture investment surged 21.8 percent year on year, outperforming the 8.2-percent gain in overall fixed asset investment, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

Most of the investment is from private investors.

NDRC official Wu Xiao attributed the rapid growth to government efforts to drive new types of agriculture-related businesses in rural regions.

China released a set of guidelines last week encouraging people to explore business opportunities in the countryside.

By rolling out a number of new support policies, the government expects them to inject new energy into the rural economy and increase farmers' incomes by introducing modern technology, systems and management.

New agribusinesses, including large-scale farming, farm produce processing, leisure agriculture, rural tourism, as well as producer and consumer services, are priorities of the policy support measures.

SOURCE:China.org.cn

11M agro-forestry export turnover at $29.1 billion

Photo: Duc Anh

A 5.9% increase in the value of export products announced by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Agro-forestry and fishery export turnover in November is estimated to be $2.69 billion, contributing to an eleven-month total of $29.1 billion, an increase of 5.9 per cent year-on-year, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has announced.

Over the first eleven months of the year the value of main export goods was $13.7 billion, up 7.2 per cent. Fishery exports are estimated to be $6.4 billion, up 6.9 per cent. The export value of forestry products is about 6.5 billion, a 0.8 per cent increase.

Coffee and pepper are two sectors seeing the strongest growth in both export quantity and value. Coffee exports in November were about 101,000 tonnes with a value of $218 million, contributing to a coffee export total over the eleven months of 1.6 million tonnes with a value of $2.98 billion. Compared to the first eleven months of 2015, coffee exports have increased 36.1 per cent in quantity and 24.3 per cent in value.

Pepper exports in November are estimated at 10,000 tonnes with a value of $78 million. In the first eleven months they stood at 170,000 tonnes with a value of $1.37 billion, equal to an increase of 36.7 per cent and 15.1 per cent, respectively.

Fisheries has made the largest contribution in export turnover, with an export value in November of $661 million, bringing the eleven-month figure to $6.4 billion, an increase of 6.9 per cent year-on-year. The US, Japan, China and South Korea were the four largest markets for the sector in the first ten months, accounting for 54.1 per cent of total export value.

Cashew, rubber, tea, wood and wooden products all achieved increases in quantity and quality compared to the first eleven months of 2015. The increase for cashews was 6.2 per cent and 18.3 per cent, rubber 12.3 per cent and 4.6 per cent, and tea 7.1 per cent and 4.3 per cent. Wood export value was up 0.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, rice has continued the downward trend in recent months. Exports decreased 25 per cent in quantity and 20.3 per cent in value. Cassava and cassava products fell 12.3 per cent in quantity and 24.9 per cent in value. In the first ten months, rice declined 21.2 per cent in quantity and 16.9 per cent in value. October rice exports were estimated at 368,000 tonnes worth $164 million, for a ten-month figure of 4.2 million tonnes and $1.9 billion.

Export turnover in agriculture, forestry and fisheries in October was $2.75 billion, bringing the ten-month figure to $26.4 billion, an increase of 6.3 per cent year-on-year. In the first ten months, agricultural export turnover reached $12.5 billion, up 7.8 per cent year-on-year, while fisheries totaled $5.7 billion, up 5.9 per cent, and forestry $5.8 billion, a slender 0.1 per cent increase.

Coffee exports saw the highest increase, of 40.2 per cent in quantity and 25.4 per cent in value. October coffee exports were 121,000 tonnes worth $246 million, bringing the quantity exported in the first ten months to 1.5 million tonnes worth $2.76 billion.

In the first ten months, products such as rubber, tea and cashew nuts all recorded increases in both in quantity and value.

Source: http://vneconomictimes.com.vn/article/business/

Conference seeks to foster PPP in agriculture

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

A conference held in Hanoi on November 30 discussed promoting links in agricultural development under private-public partnership (PPP) in Vietnam.

As an annual meeting of the “Partnership for Sustainable Agriculture in Vietnam (PSAV) member partners hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), the event reviewed PSAV partners in 2010-2016 and discussed plans for agricultural partnership development with the involvement of Vietnam’s private sector.

Grahame Dixie, Executive Director of Grow Asia in Vietnam, said the meeting offered an opportunity for participants to propose new initiatives and effective methods, opening a new chapter of PPP development in Vietnam.

Grow Asia wants to provide support to Vietnamese partners, he stressed, adding that the firm hopes to cooperate with Vietnam to help the country further expand markets for its agricultural products.

Experts at the meeting mentioned difficulties facing Vietnam in promoting links between domestic agricultural enterprises and those abroad because the PPP model for agriculture is only a pilot in Vietnam.

According to MARD Minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong, agricultural restructuring targeting high-added value must be based on science, technology, administration, and assistance from big groups and financial institutions.

The forum provided a venue to listen to investors from PSAV’s consultation groups on the implementation of the PPP model and relevant policies, thus improving the MARD’s management and Vietnam’s policies in PPP.

Formed in 2010 by the MARD and Nestle Vietnam, the PSAV comprises over 60 partners from global and local companies, provincial authorities, and Vietnam’s research institutes, and international and non-governmental organisations. It focuses on six crops, agri-finance and agrochemicals.

Source: http://en.vietnamplus.vn/conference-seeks-to-foster-ppp-in-agriculture/103526.vnp

SCIC sets Vinamilk share price

Vinamilk employee working at the company’s plant in HCM City (Photo: tuoitrenews.vn)

The State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) announced its final price for 9 percent of shares in the Vietnam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company (Vinamilk) at 144,000 VND per share (6.32 USD).

Starting December 12, the SCIC will put 130.6 million shares of Vinamilk on sale, amounting to 9 percent of Vinamilk’s charter capital.

These shares will be sold at a tick price of 100 VND and a tick size of 10 shares. Individual investors or legal entities can purchase a minimum of 20,000 shares and a maximum of 39,189,150 shares, which equals to 2.7 percent of the charter capital, in order to qualify for exchanges in accordance with the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange’s (HOSE) regulations.

Investors must deposit 10 percent of the value of their registered shares at the initial opening price. Investors can start depositing and registering on November 28, until 16:00 hrs on December 9.

The transaction period begins on December 12 and ends on December 21. If successful, the SCIC could get 18.81 trillion VND (840 million USD) from the deal. At its road show on November 2, Nguyen Duc Chi, chairman of SCIC, said it planned to sell another 36 percent of its share in Vinamilk, depending on market response to the initial offering of 9 percent.

Earlier, in October, the SCIC chose Morgan Stanley Asia Limited, Saigon Securities Inc and VinaCapital Corporate Finance Vietnam as advisors for the sale of Vinamilk shares.

Source: http://en.vietnamplus.vn/scic-sets-vinamilk-share-price/103530.vnp

China likely becomes Vietnam’s biggest tra fish market

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

China (including Hong Kong) is more likely to become Vietnam’s largest tra fish market in 2017, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

Tra fish exports to mainland China and Hong Kong in the first ten months of this year reached 235.5 million USD, up 76 percent against the same period last year, said VASEP, adding that tra fish export to this market has grown constantly in the past two years.

China has surpassed the EU to become Vietnam’s second largest tra fish market as of September 2016.

The Chinese customers’ demand for tra fish import increased due to reasonable price, said the Vietnam Trade Promotion Office in Chongquing (China).

Although the US is the Vietnam’s largest tra fish market, high anti-dumping taxes and the catfish investigation programme of the US Department of Agriculture are barriers for Vietnamese tra fish exporters.

Therefore, the association forecasted that tra fish export to the US market in 2017 will be not as high as that in 2016.

It is also the reason for China to possibly become the largest market for Vietnamese tra fish in 2017, said the VASEP.

Tra fish material markets in Mekong Delta provinces are now sluggish in terms of purchasing power and price, as tra fish processing plants were buying and producing moderately after collecting sufficient goods to export to the EU, the US and China on Christmas and New Year occasions.

Source: http://en.vietnamplus.vn/china-likely-becomes-vietnams-biggest-tra-fish-market/103339.vnp

Origin of Ho Chi Minh City pork to be traceable via mobile app

People in Ho Chi Minh City will soon be able to trace the origin of pork by scanning the package label with a smartphone app, according to a recent plan by the local Department of Industry and Trade.

The plan, to be implemented by the Department of Industry and Trade, Veterinary Department, and High Technology Association, looks to track pigs from farms to slaughterhouses and markets or supermarkets.

Customers will be able to check the origin and journey of their pork by installing the free Te-food mobile application and use the app to scan a QR-coded label on the pork’s package.

Such information as where the pig was raised, when and where it was slaughtered, or from which wholesale market its meat was distributed will be made available to buyers via a simple scan.

Fifteen pig-breeding firms and facilities, which can meet 100 percent of the city’s pork demand with their nearly 1,000 pig farms, have agreed to the plan, according to Nguyen Ngoc Hoa, deputy director of the Department of Industry and Trade.

Eleven slaughterhouses and two wholesale markets, Binh Dien and Hoc Mon, which cover over 80 percent of the city’s pork supply, will be part of the program.

Customers will also be able to buy tracked pork at the four markets of Ben Thanh, An Dong, Hoa Binh, and Thai Binh, while 59 outlets owned by Co.opmart, Satramart, Big C, Aeon, and Aeon Citimart are also featured in the program.

Four convenient store franchises Co.op Food, Satra Foods, Sagrifood, and Vissan with over 200 locations in the city have also signed up as distributors of the tracked pork.

The application will be available for download from December 10, and the program will be officially launched citywide on January 1, 2017.

Source: http://tuoitrenews.vn/business/38122/

New policy of breeding industry

Caishen Zhao, the chief designer of Agriculture Cooperation Forum, thought that miscellaneous grains industry and livestock breeding industry will develop rapidly in next few years. The nation was overly focused on the production of wheat, rice and corn before. But now there is an encouragement of planting all kinds of miscellaneous grains and breeding flocks and herds. So we can forecast that the subsidies of miscellaneous grains and livestock breeding will increase in 2017.

The main strategies are as follows:

1.Grain reduction and feed increase, expand grass industry.

Reduce the production of grain corn, and develop the whole plant silage corn. Use existing farmland to develop artificial grass and grassland rotation, to expand planting area of alfalfa, oat grass and other high-quality forage, to make efforts to construct the scale and specialize production base for high-quality forage to promote forage industrialization.

Subsidies for alfalfa plant

Cooperatives have existed for more than 1 year. The registered capital of forage production and proceeding enterprises is 2 million yuan(inclusive) or more. The inventory of dairy breeding enterprises or farms is more than 300 heads.

Subsidy standard: 1.8 million yuan for 3,000 mu(inclusive) or more.

Subsidy usage: implementation of improved varieties of alfalfa, application of standard production technology, improvement of production conditions and enhancement of alfalfa quality management, etc.

2.Expand cattle industry and stabilize sheep industry to make herbivorous animal husbandry stronger.

Develop dairy industry to stabilize beef cattle and mutton sheep.

Focus on the development of dairy breeding, dairy processing, enhancement dairy industry and integration of the development of dairy industry.

Support development of moderate-scale farming of beef cattle and mutton sheep and construction of standard-scale breeding farms.

Construction project of dairy standard-scale breeding area(field)-Animal Husbandry Bureau, Development and Reform Commission

Declaration condition: dairy inventory is 300 heads(inclusive) or more

Subsidy standard:

0.8 million yuan for 300-499 heads

1.3 million yuan for 500-999heads

1.7 million yuan for 1,000heads

Construction project of dairy standard-scale breeding area(field)-Animal Husbandry Bureau, Development and Reform Commission

Subsidy standard:

Mutton sheep: 150 thousand yuan for 300-499 heads, 250 thousand yuan for 500-699 heads, 350 thousand yuan for 700-999heads, 500 thousand yuan for 1,000heads.

Beef cattle: 300 thousand yuan for 100-299 heads, 500 thousand yuan for 300 heads.

3.Develop characteristic industry

Focus on middle or high-end products, develop characteristic brand agriculture.

Develop production of miscellaneous grain and beans actively, implement grading and intensive processing of miscellaneous grain, develop nutritional, healthy, medicinal and edible homologous and functional products.

Subsidies for agriculture technology implementation

The subsidy is 0.5-1 million yuan for miscellaneous plant technology, or introducing technology such as new variety introduction, agriculture storage, preservation, evaporation, package, etc.

Declaration subject: Farmer professional cooperative organization, big-specialized households of crop and animal production, family farms, agriculture industrialize enterprises and other new agriculture production and operation entity.

Declaration project of breeding base for miscellaneous grain varieties development, the subsidy is approximately 1 million yuan.

The declaration project: peasant cooperatives, big-specialized households of crop and animal production, family farms, agriculture enterprises, seed business.

Source:http://www.chinabreed.com/

Vice premier stresses food safety

DATE:2017-11-30 SOURCE:Xinhua News Agency

2017-11-29 20:38:33|Editor: Liangyu

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang (C), also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and the deputy head of the State Council's food safety commission, attends a meeting on improving food safety in Beijing, capital of China, on Nov. 28 and 29, 2017. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang has called for more efforts to improve food safety.

"Food safety is a basic requirement," Wang said at a meeting on the issue held in Beijing on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Despite improvements, there are still many problems in the industry, he noted, with some local authorities still lagging in agricultural standardization and food safety in the catering sector.

Mechanisms and supervision methods should improve the ability to manage food safety, the vice premier said.

Wang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, is the deputy head of the State Council's food safety commission.

According to a guideline released last month, a product quality traceability system will be complete by 2020, targeting food, medicine, special equipment, dangerous materials and rare earth.

The system will provide information regarding sources, destinations and accountable persons to reinforce product quality and safety, the guideline said.

Related Accessories：

HCMC guarantees safe pork with CCTV surveillance

Ho Chi Minh City will install surveillance cameras and increase inspections at kiosks selling pork in bazaars as food safety becomes a national issue in Vietnam. This is part of a pilot project using high-tech devices, including a smartphone app and ID bands on pigs, to monitor pork quality.

The project, which is expected to commence in November, is an attempt to keep traders from blending in pork of unknown origin to sell with safe pork, said Nguyen Ngoc Hoa, Vice Director of the city’s Department of Industry and Trade.

It is part of the ‘Pilot model for selling safe food in bazaars’ program, initiated by the Hi-tech Association in Ho Chi Minh. The association has designed a free smartphone app that can be used to check the origin og the meat including how the pig has been raised and slaughtered.

The project is set to be experimented at 12 slaughterhouses, two wholesale bazaars, several inner-city bazaars and supermarket chains, namely Co.opmart, Satra, Vissan, An Ha and Sagrifoods. After pork, HCMC will extend project to vegetables and fruits.

In may, Hanoi opened three hotlines to gather information from members of the public about food safety violations. City dwellers have also taken the matter into their own hands with some growing their own vegetables and even raising pigs in their own houses.

The authorities are coming down hard on offenders. A new law, which came into effect on July 1, saw food safety offenders facing up to 20 years’ imprisonment and fined up to USD 9000.

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First Le Porc du Mékong product to hit markets in Q1 2017

Le Porc du Mékong branded safe and hygienically processed pork is expected in Vietnam’s markets in Q1 of next year.

“We expect to start production on the farms belonging to the scheme by the implementation of our standards before yearend”, Christophe Guillaume, CEO, Neovia Vietnam, told Asian Pork Magazine.

The scheme is a collaboration between French companies, namely feed additive producer Neovia, breeder company Grimaud Group and meat processor Le Boucher, and 600 Vietnamese farmers, headed by the Animal Husbandry Association of Vietnam.

It hopes to reach the full capacity of the Le Boucher slaughterhouse by 2022. According to Mr Guillaume this translates to 360,000 pigs slaughters per year.

The production chain, called Le Porc du Mékong, will produce high quality pork products as well as establish a transparent, strictly controlled closed pork production system on the Mekong Delta.

“We estimate that we will need around 20,000 sows in production on the Mekong delta area. This could involve up to 600 farmers according to the current size of the pig farms in this area”.

He thinks the pig farmers belonging to the scheme have a lot to gain. He said they will improve their competitiveness thanks to the sustainability of their business, allowing them to have a medium-term vision through stable suppliers of feed and animals and purchasers of market pigs.

“They will achieve a better technical knowledge in pig production through the implementation of our production standards and our technical support. Farmers will see higher economic gains such as a decrease of the production cost through better production practices”.

He added a better integration of societal expectations through the production of a safe and traceable pork meat and transparency in their production practices.

“The aim is not to produce cheaper pork meat but to provide to average consumer products of high quality at the same price as the meat they find currently on the market (on which they don’t have any information about safety and traceability)”.

Pig farming in Vietnam is currently dominated by backyard small-scale farmers. How will this project affect these farmers?

“It will be difficult to measure the effect of our project on the pig farming landscape in Vietnam. However, we are conscious to implement our production standards and manage the traceability of the animals in backyard and small-scale farms.

“So, we will focus mainly on farms with a minimum of 50 sows to encourage them to participate in the Le Porc du Mékong production sector.”

Source:www.asian-agribiz.com

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