When farmers have a bountiful crop, farm prices fall because of oversupply

Thang said that investors in the agriculture sector are mostly small enterprises. Since the production is not optimally organized, farmers cannot earn much money from their hard work. 

When they have a bountiful crop, farm produce prices fall dramatically because of oversupply. The prices go up when they have a poor crop, and have nothing to sell.

Farm-produce rescue campaigns are launched to call on people to consume more products to help ease farmers’ losses. To ease farmers’ difficulties, distributors sold products at no profit and subsidized transport, display and advertisement costs.

The problem is blamed on poor marketing. 

Up to 70 percent of Vietnam’s farm produce is exported to China. Chinese merchants understand Vietnam’s agricultural products. They know when to collect products and what to buy. Thus, Vietnamese farmers tend to look forward to selling farm produce to merchants. As a result, the quality and export markets have not grown as expected.

Duong Van Chin, director of the Dinh Thanh Agriculture Research Center, disagreed with the view. He affirmed that Vietnamese farmers are not as passive as described, and can grow any crop.

However, their problem is that they don’t know where to sell products and how domestic and foreign markets perform.

“This is not the fault of farmers. Selling farm produce is the job of merchants and enterprises,” Chin said.

The expert went on to say that the linkage between farmers and enterprises in Vietnam is still weak. Very few Vietnamese enterprises make professional investments in farm produce. 

They don’t think of sending staff to the fields or helping farmers select seeds, cultivate and harvest. They only focus on collecting products and selling for profit. 

In the past, Vietnamese farmers did not want to join cooperatives. They want separate land plots to cultivate crops and sell produce themselves.

As a result, the products created by many farmers were very different. It is difficult to find homogeneous products to satisfy orders from import countries. 

He stressed that rescue campaigns are just a temporary solution. To solve the existing problems, Vietnam needs to organize large-scale production. 

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable exports are expected to reach $4.5 billion by 2020, with fruits accounting for $3.6 billion.

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