High quality farm produce unsalable, farmers get exhausted Farmers spend big money and efforts to grow high quality farm produce which meet international standards, but the products have been refused, or sold at low prices. The My Thanh Cooperative in Cai Lay district in Tien Giang province has given up farming rice in accordance with GlobalGAP. This shows the “bitterness” of the high quality farm produce in the Mekong Delta. High quality farm produce program comes to deadlock My Thanh Cooperative is not alone. The farmers in the provinces of An Giang, Kien Giang and Can Tho City felt so disappointed when their Jasmine scented rice has been equated with the low quality rice IR50404. The high quality rice has been left unsalable because of the sharp increase in the area of fragrant rice growing area. Meanwhile, enterprises refused to purchase the rice at high prices, reasoning the impurities in the products. According to Nguyen Minh Nghia, Deputy Head of the Tan Hiep district’s Agriculture Sub-department in Kien Giang province, farmers have got angry because they were advised to grow high quality rice, but the rice has been unsalable. Meanwhile, the farmers had to pay much higher to grow the rice varieties and face higher risks. High quality rice varieties, including Jasmine and long grain rice, have been grown on up to 70 percent of the total 300,439 hectares of the winter-spring rice fields. Nguyen Quang Binh from the Kien Giang provincial Industry and Trade Department has confirmed that export companies only collect low quality products to export to the orders placed by the importers. Exporters have complained that it’s very difficult to find buyers at this moment. Dr. Le Van Banh, Head of the Mekong Delta Rice Institute, commented that farmers are always put at a disadvantage in the rice production and distribution chain. Enterprises only collect the products they want, while they should have placed orders with farmers on what they wanted, and farmers would grow rice varieties to the orders. Getting exhausted because of GlobalGAP The latest onion crop in Soc Trang province was bountiful with the high yield of 20 tons per hectares. However, both the onion growers and exporters were not happy because of the sharp selling price falls and slow sale. The export markets have got narrower due to the technical barriers installed by the import countries, though Vietnamese products meet GlobalGAP standards. It is estimated that the investment rate for one hectare of onion is VND100 million. However, with the current selling price of VND5,000 per kilo, farmers incur the loss of VND30 million per hectare. The Vinh Chau’s farmers once incurred big loss last year, which was blamed on the oversupply caused by the sharp increase in the onion growing area. However, despite the growing area decrease of 1,000 hectares this year, the onion price keeps falling down dramatically. This shows that the onion sale gets stuck because of the technical barriers. Meanwhile, settling the problem is beyond the farmers’ ability. Of the 7,000 hectares of onion growing area in Vinh Chau, the farming in accordance with GlobalGAP is applied in an area of 1,000 hectares. Multi-billions dong has been poured into farming, but the sum of money has been spent in vain. Source:TBKTSG