Vietnam Tea Industry: "Exit" from the Tea Board

Tan Huong Tea Cooperative produces tea complying with the UZT standard (UTZ CERTIFIED is a worldwide certification program, giving the standards for responsible producing and trading agricultural products) from June 2011 to November 2011 and was initially successful in 30 household members with 27 tons and 14 ha of qualified tea.

 

To produce tea complying with the UZT standard, farmers have to spend more effort than in traditional production methods; they have to work scientifically and invest a large amount of money to test the manufacturing process. However, according to a recent report of the Cooperative representative, organic tea products are not sold at a higher price than other tea in the market.

 

Perhaps that is the main reason that organic tea area in Vietnam does not exceed 30 percent, though this program has been campaigning intensely for years. In fact, the number of companies investing or consuming this product is not high. In the domestic market, consumers pay almost no attention to the positive aspects of this product. Meanwhile, “dirty” tea products that risk consumer health are still highly consumed. In fact, foreign markets have more stringent standards for Vietnamese tea products. The most obvious sign is that Vietnam is the top of the list of countries having tea products rejected by the United States.

 

In this context, regular domestic firms often compete by lowering prices in the domestic market and international market to win customers.

 

So the desire for a tea board to build legal systems, techniques and import and export processes in order to bring a new look for the Vietnamese tea industry has become stronger.

 

It is known that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam, which is responsible for the management of the tea industry model and quality of tea products, is conducting research on the initiative to establish a Vietnam Tea Board based on the experience of Kenya, a famous exporter for high quality black tea in the world.

 

According to Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Diep Kinh Tan, the Vietnam Tea Board’s primary function will be to develop the legal system, techniques, import and export processes. The important policies which will be built are land ownership and distribution of profits to farmers based on the value chain of production. Tea farmers will lease the land from the state for a period of 50-100 years or have tea area ownership. Farmers who want to plant tea have to ask for permission and must meet eligibility rules. They will be granted license by the Tea Board to receive benefits as provided standard seedlings and free technical training, and will be subject to the supervision of the local Tea Board.

 

In addition, an important task of the Board is to quickly implement planning of safe tea production areas in each locality as a basis for attracting investment in high quality tea products. The plan is the basis to build raw materials production areas of safe tea organically-oriented, limited use of inorganic fertilizers and chemical pesticides; application of GAP standard from production to processing into final products, the production process is associated with certification, certified by domestic and international certifying bodies (VietGAP, GlobalGAP, Uzt certified ...), said Mr Tan.

 

Vietnam possesses natural conditions for the development of tea industry to become a sector that can bring great income for the national economy and contribute to people's lives, create economic, political, cultural and social stability in mountainous, midland and remote areas. Therefore, the initiative to establish the Tea Board is expected to bring sustainable development to Vietnam’s tea industry, distribute profits to farmers complying with the value chain of production.

 

In particular, the important task of this Board is to quickly implement planning of safe tea production areas in each locality as a basis for attracting investment in high quality tea products. The plan is the basis to build raw materials production areas of safe tea organically-oriented, limited use of inorganic fertilizers, chemical pesticides; application of good agricultural practices GAP, from production to processing into final products, the production process is associated with certification, certified by domestic and international certifying bodies (VietGAP, GlobalGAP, Uzt certified ...), Mr Tan said.