VIETNAM,CURRENT STATUS OF SECTOR DEVELOPMENT FROM THE SMALL FARMER PERSPECTIVES

Department of Crop Production

Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development

Bangkok, 29 Oct to 02 Nov 2013 I. INTRODUCTION

• Vietnam is a subtropical climate condition • Coconut trees suitable on many different soils - but most suitable on slightly saline and sandy soils • The Coconut trees is also growing very well on the coast of the Mekong Delta and Central region of VietNam • Coconut is a traditional crop, and has contributed to improve additional incomes and livelihood of farmers households, improve human nutrition, and create jobs for rural laborers - Is highly tolerance to salinity intrusion, drought and floods - Is harvested monthly with multiple uses - Is intercropped with many other crops - a picture attached to the homeland and people

II. STATUS OF COCONUT PRODUCTION IN VIETNAM

Figure 1: Areas of coconut cultivation in coastal region of Central and Mekong delta, Vietnam • Since the 1980s, Vietnam had planned to develop the coconut with scale of 700,000 ha.

• In 1991, Vietnam has 330,000 hectares of coconut. However, in a long time, the area of coconut​​ continued to decline,

• Rapid declining of coconut from 2000-2003: - Development food crop is priority - shifting to aquaculture in coatal areas - growing to develop more fruit crops - coconut processing is still very weak - price is low. Planted Area Harversted Area

ha

160,000

140,000

120,000

100,000

80,000

60,000

40,000

20,000

0 Years 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Figure 2. Evolution of coconut area from 2004 to 2012 in Vietnam • Currently, Vietnam has about 150,000 hectares of coconut. • Ben Tre (MD) is the largest (50,000 ha) accounted for 35% of the country's coconut • Tra Vinh (15,769 ha), Tien Giang (12,754 ha), Ca Mau (8,044 ha), Kien Giang (7,745 ha), Vinh Long (7,726 ha). • Binh Dinh (9,673 ha) (coastal region of centre VietNam)

Coconuts/ha

10000.00 1,400,000,000

1,200,000,000 9500.00

1,000,000,000 9000.00

800,000,000 8500.00 600,000,000

8000.00 400,000,000

7500.00 200,000,000

7000.00 0 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Years Yield Production

Figure 2. Evolution of yield and production of coconut in Vietnam from 2004 to 2012 • From 2004 to date, yield, production increased over the years. • Highest yield in 2010 was 9,510 coconuts/ ha • Production was 1,239 million coconuts in 2012. • coconut farm size/household (2011)

Farm size N (%)

• From 0.1 to 0.5 ha 41 34.2 • > 0.5 to 1.0 ha 52 43.3 • > 1.0 to 1.5 ha 16 13.3 • > 1.5 to 2.0 ha 7 5.8 • > 2 ha 4 3.3 • Total 120 100

• Variety of coconut in VN - very diverse - tall and dwarf coconut Red “Xiêm”

Green ”Xiêm”

Green “Xiêm:

Dwarf Xiêm”aromatic ”Macapuno” ”aromatic” • coconut intercropped with cocao, banana, lemon, pomelo, king orange, mangosteen/ and honey bees, fish, prawn..

Figure : Coconut intercropped with cocao

Figure : Coconut intercropped with pomelo Figure : Coconut intercropped with fish farming Figure : Coconut intercropped with Prawn • coconut products Mushroom substrate Orchid substrate

seedling substrate • Coconut handicrafts

• Trade promotion • Bentre Coconut Festival in 2010 and 2012 III ADVANTAGES/OBSTACLES IN COCONUT PRODUCTION

1. Advantages: • coconut products (nut, , pith, desiccated, charcoal..) are much more demand and fully guaranteed for domestic uses as well as international markets (more than 80 countries) • create more jobs in the rural areas • reduce poverty, increased incomes and livelihood of farmers per unit of arable land

• In recent years, prices of coconut products are increasing • Farmers practices to apply new technologies for management of pests (coconut beetles), to increase yield and production • Coconut intercropping (cocao, mangosteen, citrus, fish-prawn farming has been exploited by farmers

• Many enterprises have been established in provinces for processing of coconut products (desiccated coconut, activated carbon, coir, candy, cleaning soil, handicraft..) contribute for more product’s value added in coconut development

2. Obstacles

• Export coconut products as raw materials except desiccated coconuts and activated charcoal. • Investment in new product development to gain more value added is limited • Lack of investment in developing products in both domestic and foreign markets. • shortage of raw materials (processing companies) • Investment for replanting • Less investment for coconut development in central region • Value chain in Vietnamese coconut is still weak (production, processing facilities and branding) • Markets (farmers-enterprises cooperate)

IV. SUGGESTIONS

• Coconut development in Vietnam needs the supports from international cooperation: - high yielding coconut varieties, - advanced technologies, - processing facilities, - marketing information,

- product branding.. - technical assistance and collaborative research • Requesting for support funding the 4th coconut festival scheduled to be held in Vietnam in 2015.

V POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

• Construction coconut development partnership program involving government, enterprises, farmers and research institutions. • Applying new technology to improve yield, productivity and quality. • Scaling up the intercropping models to increase incomes of farmers. • Applying "small farmers and large field” model on the coconut plantation to ensure sustainability of coconut development.

• Promoting the role of Coconut Association of VietNam, the farmers-enterprises linkages. • Upgrading processing technologies to diversify the products to gain high added value (value chain products). • Promote branding, market research and trade promotion. • Restriction for exporting of raw materials./.