A conference was held in Hanoi on April 24 to discuss ways to help pig breeders and farm owners following serious drop of pig price.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong said at the meeting that during five past months, pig price gradually fell to VND21,000 ($1) per kilogram.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong said at the meeting that during five past months, pig price gradually fell to VND21,000 ($1) per kilogram.
It is forecast that the price will continue decreasing in the next summer months. The Minister stressed it is at the lowest price during years in the world as well.
The Animal Husbandry Association of Vietnam, animal feed fetches VND9,000 a kilogram and a pig requires 4 kilograms or VND36,000 to increase one kilogram of meat which is sold at VND23,000. This means pig farmers will be suffered a big loss.
Oversupply is the reason for the price drop, said Minister Cuong. Within 20 past years, the figure of pig feeding increased by 20 times from 1.8 million tons a year in 1996 to 5.4 million tons in 2017 meantime people have different demand of meat for their meals.
Furthermore, the process from breeding to slaughter to transport and supply also cause the price decline. 45 percent of pigs are raised in pig farming while 55 percent of pigs are bred in 3 million small-scale household farms without monitoring quantity.
Moreover, just a few enterprises process pig meat into different food but most of meat are sold in markets with high price. Singapore, Philippines, and China have giant demand of meat and all import a large quantity of pig meat yet Vietnamese meat can not enter these markets. Vietnamese pig breeders had not been in despairs before.
Minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong called for enterprises to purchase pig for freezing for future processing in a bid to share difficulties with pig breeders.
Director of C.P Company Vu Anh Tuan pledged to buy pig for freezing as well as reduce prices of animal feed and small animal while Dabaco Corporation representative said that it has reduced prices of feeds and small pig by 5-7 percent last week and provide technology to farmers to curd diseases among the herd of pig.
Enterprises proposed the Ministry of Industry and Trade to halt import meat. For long term, it needs to plan for the sector carefully.
Minister Cuong said that the best way is to re-structure pig breeding and scale of the sector. The Ministry will set up a pork meat association to increase the connection between farmers and enterprises. Especially, it will expand export to Asian countries
As per the figure of the General Customs Department, since the beginning to March 15, nearly 7,800 tons of pigs worth $9.4 million has been imported into the Southeast Asian country, an increase of 15.8 percent on quantity and 21.2 percent on value compared to same period last year.
In first three months, the country imported nearly 41,000 tons of different meat.
