The livestock industry since early this year has been struggling with rampant diseases and shrinking output. Many households cannot continue farming due to the lack of funds.
The livestock industry since early this year has been struggling with rampant diseases and shrinking output. Many households cannot continue farming due to the lack of funds.
In this context, foreign-invested livestock firms have expanded operations to increase their market shares. This is the reason why animal feed imports have surged by nearly 50% even though local farming households are facing multiple problems, said experts.
Foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) with industrial livestock farming have imported a large volume of animal feeds in the first six months. In addition, they have boosted imports of animal feed ingredients from their parent companies to cut costs, leading to a strong rise in imports of this item.
Meanwhile, animal feed production at enterprises catering to household husbandry is on the decline.
An animal feed producer in Lai Thieu, Binh Duong, said the sales volume of his company in the year’s first half had dropped by nearly 50% over the same period last year.
“We are focusing on recovering old debts and thus do not prioritize production. The purchasing power has significantly weakened because many livestock farmers in the southeastern region have stopped farming.”
“In such a difficult situation, there’s hardly any animal feed producer able to achieve growth. Therefore, it is unlikely that animal feed makers increase imports of animal feeds and their ingredients,” he said.
Pham Duc Binh, Vice Chairman of the poultry association in Dong Nai, remarked the livestock industry had begun to eliminate the players with limited experience and financial capability. These businesses may go bankrupt and small-scale livestock farming can hardly survive in the future.
This is both a challenge and an opportunity for the livestock sector to overcome the current difficulties and progress to industrial farming for better control on diseases and production costs, he said.
(Source: SGT)
