Livestock farms in Dong Nai province, the country's biggest livestock farming province, have been expanding fast in the past years.
Livestock farms in Dong Nai province, the country’s biggest livestock farming province, have been expanding fast in the past years.
Figures of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development show the province had 1.12 million pigs in 2010 but the number shot up to 1.5 million pigs last year and is forecast to reach two million pigs in 2020.
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Phan Minh Bau, deputy director of the department, said the forecast is based on meat demand of Vietnamese consumers and excludes the impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, over which trade ministers from 12 Pacific Rim countries clinched a deal to conclude negotiations earlier this month.
Animal feed producers and breed production farms have a positive outlook, so they are gearing up for production expansion, according to Bau.
Cargill Vietnam supplies more than one million tons of animal feed this year and is investing in a new factory Nghe An Province to increase its output. The new feed facility in the north-central province is scheduled to begin production next year.
Talking about the TPP impact on the local livestock industry, Chanh Truong, chief representative of Cargill in Vietnam, said small farming facilities might face difficulties or be eliminated from the market.
But in general, the industry could still grow, driven by increasing meat demand and higher economic growth. This is the reason behind Cargill Vietnam’s decision to build a new animal feed factory, according to the representative.
“Our business expansion is based on the overall outlook of the livestock industry in the next 20 years,” Truong said.
Nguyen Tan Hau, director of Tam Do Livestock Co. based in Dong Nai Province’s Long Thanh District, shared Truong’s view, saying economic expansion would drive up demand for meat. He added that increasing pig supplies by big farms would offset declining supplies of households.
Hau said his company would keep expanding operations and plan to open a new farm with 1,200 sows next year to double the company’s sow production capacity.
According to Bau, production cost at independent livestock farms is often higher than at farms which outsource livestock for C.P. Vietnam. Therefore, when the meat import tariff is cut to 0%, small farms would face disadvantages in competition on the home market.
C.P. Vietnam is investing in a closed production chain and trying to directly sell meat products to consumers, instead of via distributors, to reduce costs.
Small livestock farms are striving to cut costs for survival. Tran Cong Dan, the owner of a pig farm in Thong Nhat District of Dong Nai Province, said he has prepared feed for his pig herd instead of buying it from retailers, which helps him save around VND300,000 per pig.
Dan has invested in raising sows to supply piglets for his own farm, which provides around 4,000 pigs for the market a year.
(Source:SGT)
