2011 is a difficult year for animal husbandry, with wide spread epidemic diseases and price hikes on inputs. Mr Hoang Kim Giao, Director of Animal Husbandry Department of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that in the first six months input costs for animal husbandry greatly increased, in which the price of corn increased by 24 percent, fish meal increased by nine percent, cassava slices was up by 19.2 percent, mixed feeds rose by 8.7 percent for poultry, and by 9.6 percent for pigs. Also, in just six early months, prices of animal feeds have increased up to 7 times.
Barriers to control quality and epidemics in the export of animal husbandry products of Vietnam are still limited. From July 1, when the Law on Food Safety took effect, it required higher and higher quality of agricultural products and foodstuffs including meat products, while the Vietnam's animal husbandry is mainly the small sized with poor epidemic prevention. Besides, the problems of inflation and exchange-rate growth also greatly affect on animal husbandry because Vietnam depends so heavily on the world market due to largely imports of animal feed and veterinary drugs.
According to Mr Nguyen Hong Ha, Director of ALAPHA Animal Husbandry Joint Stock Company now due to fluctuations in market prices, many commodity prices have risen. Especially, the price of labour, this has created many difficulties for the farm owners in spending a huge amount of money to invest in environmental treatment, and caused the greater the difficulties for farmers in the raising process. Specifically, in 2004 the Company paid VND1,250 for one kilogram increasing in pig's weight, but at that time one kilogram of pig was sold at VND14, 000. Meanwhile, by July 2011 if pig's weight is one kg increased, the Company had to pay VND2, 350 for one man force while the price of 1kg of pork is VND 69,000. Thus, farmers now do not take much interest as people think, and the current breeding is not "super profitable", not "pig raising better than gold trading" so that people do not have a sympathetic look to the animal husbandry and strive to support the import of meat to push the domestic animal husbandry to the abyss.
Mr Ha shared, "From our managerial experience for 10 years, Vietnam needs to focus on developing the raising farms based on industrial scales, and to do so, it does not require to pursue the program "All people raise animals." As in reality, an animal raising unit like our company, with 700 sows, one-year offer on the market 12,000 pigs, equivalent to 1,200 tonnes of pork and is equivalent to about 200 medium-sized farms which have enough meat to provide for about 35,000 people (average 30kg/one person/year).
Moreover, to support the animal raising farms for development, it is necessary to have two important elements: capital and land. First, regarding the support of capital and interest, with large investment for industrial animal husbandry, according to our experience, the current investment is about VND40 million per one sow including building cages, breeding sows, bearing piglets, and caring duration to export pork. It takes at least 1.5 - 2 years since there have the land for cages until the pigs are exported. At this level, in Vietnam agriculture there are not many households having the ability to invest professionally, therefore, it is necessary to have the supports from the state capital; or at minimum the support of interest rate within the first two years.
Regarding land, for long term and sustainable development of animal husbandry, environmental and disease factors are extremely important; this is associated with the lease or purchase land. If prescribed, farm land must be about two to five ha, and the required time reaches 20 years, away from residential areas and cheap prices.
Mr Hoang Kim Giao also said that focusing on the development of the animal raising farms is an indispensable work in the strategic development of the animal husbandry. However, Vietnam is an agricultural country, so development planning issues also need to balance and harmonize, to ensure benefits for people in planning area.
Luu Hiep
Vietnamese
