Crop protection enhances Vietnam’s agricultural exports

On November 27th 2018, in Hanoi, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) in collaboration with Partnership for Sustainable Agriculture Vietnam (PSAV) held a workshop on “Driving Vietnam agricultural exports and food safety: The role of crop protection.”

According to the MARD, over the past 10 years, Vietnam agriculture has maintained the strong growth rate with increasing growth quality. Currently, Vietnam agricultural exports are ranked as second in Southeast Asia, and 15th in the world. There are 10 Vietnam’s export commodity groups worth at least 1 billion USD per year, five of which, including shrimp, fruits, cashew, coffee and furniture have export turnover of 3 billion USD per year.

Despite of that, in reality, Vietnam agricultural products still face multiple difficulties, of which the biggest barrier is the quality standards and pesticide residue levels in agricultural products exported to major markets.

Only in the European market, in 2017, up to 90 cases of Vietnam export agricultural products and food are warned, or even returned due to violations related to food safety. Since the beginning of this year, over 40 cases have been warned and declined for imports. Vietnam is among the countries with the highest number of warned and returned cases from Europe.

According to experts, the majority of returned shipments are due to violations related to exceeding the maximum residue limit (MRL) in agricultural products and foodstuffs. In particular, MRL (milligram per kilogram) is the maximum content of pesticide residue in foodstuffs, prescribed by the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues (CXL) or a national competent agency.

Nguyen Xuan Hong, Former Director of Department of Plant Protection, said that Vietnam agricultural exports were subject to the two most significant technical barriers: food safety and animal and plant quarantine. In terms of food safety, crop protection was important for the production process. Most of countries had to use crop protection chemicals and fertilizers. However, meeting the maximum residue limits could guarantee exports.

"The solution is to produce as the good agricultural practice (GAP) method and join chains. Producers must understand requirements of agricultural importers and consumers. The production organization is the most important stage, which requires close links with enterprises, cooperatives, and management agencies on the basis of chain production," said Hong.

A popular trend is strengthening technical barriers while tariff barriers gradually abolished, including regulations on MRL for agricultural exports in order to protect the domestic production. If these requirements are not understood and followed, that will become a major obstacle for Vietnam agricultural products to penetrate the international market.

Desiring to bring high-tech solutions to farmers in time, Siang Hee Tan, CEO of Crop Life Asia said that through training, Crop Life had been helping farmers produce in accordance with standards, so that they could both enhance outputs, and meet requirements and compete in the market.
Currently, Crop Life in collaboration with the MARD is guiding farmers to use pesticides safely and efficiently in several key provinces. Siang Hee Tan expected that those solutions could be applied not only major crops, such as rubber, coffee, pepper, etc., but also on all types of crops in Vietnam.
In addition, the company also cooperates with the MARD to develop a regulatory framework for Vietnam to meet key indicators of major export markets that Vietnam is aiming.