Son La's agriculture: Paying great attention to promoting and introducing brands of agricultural products

Editor's note: Son La's agriculture is shifting strongly with the green and fast desire and towards clean production and applying high technology. Son La is building large raw material areas to serve production and processing; attracting investment from large businesses such as DOVECO to complete the production chain; and continuously searching and developing markets.

After a transformation process, Son La has had lessons in building linkage chains and solutions to develop the agricultural product market. To clarify these issues, Vietnam Agriculture Newspaper organized a talk show with two esteemed guests: Mr. Nguyen Thanh Cong, Vice Chairman of the Son La Provincial People's Committee, and Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tung, Deputy General Director of Dong Giao Foodstuff Export Joint Stock Company (DOVECO).

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Son La's agriculture: From a poor corn capital to a key fruit-growing region in the North

Dong Giao Foodstuff Export Joint Stock Company (DOVECO) is one of the large businesses investing in Son La's agricultural sector. So, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tung, could you share DOVECO's goals when investing in Son La and what Son La's potential and advantages mean for DOVECO's development strategy, sir?

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tung: After 69 years of construction, development, and growth, DOVECO currently has three processing factories nationwide in Ninh Binh, Gia Lai, and Son La. With the potential and advantages of Son La, DOVECO determined that DOVEVO's fruit and vegetable processing center in Son La will be the company's development strategy in Son La.

With Son La's advantages of soil, geographical balance, and climate, DOVECO is currently developing six main crops: sweet corn, soybean, pineapple, passion fruit, baby cucumber, and spinach, which have brought economic efficiency in the past year.

Although DOVECO's processing factory in Son La has just come into operation for nearly a year, the factory has produced with up to 80% of its processing capacity, which brings a huge competitive advantage to DOVECO in the domestic and international markets.

What is DOVECO Son La's development strategy in the coming time, sir?

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tung: The current total processing capacity of the factory in Son La is 52,000 tons of products/year. With Son La's potential and advantages of agricultural products, the plan of DOVECO until 2025 is that in addition to developing existing traditional crops such as sweet corn, pineapple, passion fruit, soybeans, vegetables, and baby cucumber, DOVECO will build the second factory to process pineapple juice, passion fruit concentrate, and mango concentrate.

This second factory aims to take advantage of Son La's short-season mango output. At the same time, DOVECO will continue to develop regionally specific crops such as spinach. Continue to develop crops such as baby cucumber and cauliflower and Son La's advantageous crops.

Sincerely thank you for Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tung's recent answers. Regarding the story of agricultural product markets and trade, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Cong, how has Son La province accompanied the business community and cooperatives to find agricultural product markets? And could you share some lessons as well as viewpoints and policies of Son La on the story of agricultural product markets, sir?

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Cong: When Son La province organizes production well and creates growing areas and production chains, it pays great attention to promoting and introducing brands of agricultural products and production chains for both good production and good consumption. Good consumption will bring economic efficiency to businesses, investors, cooperatives, and farmers.

Specifically, the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee established a Steering Committee for consumption and export of the province's agricultural products, decided by the Standing Committee and headed by the Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee. The Steering Committee is responsible for finding and connecting markets, bringing businesses and cooperatives to connect and expand markets in association with promoting and introducing agricultural products.

Besides, build a policy system, such as Resolution 128 of the Provincial People's Council to support policies in agricultural production. The Provincial People's Committee also supports consumption promotion through booths at agricultural product exhibitions and weeks.

Son La built a comprehensive 5-year plan for the 2020-2025 period to promote the consumption of agricultural products and paid attention to accompanying processing businesses to bring post-processing products to the market. Son La participated in almost all trade promotion programs throughout the country and around the world. Internationally, we participated in Expo 2020 in Nanning, China; Exhibition of 196 countries in Milan, Italy; and trade fairs in China and Hong Kong.

Domestically, we regularly organize weeks, such as Plum Week, Strawberry Week, Mango Week, and Longan Week, from South to North. We also sign linkages with corporations having supermarket systems, such as Wincomerce and Saigon Co.op, to promote and introduce agricultural products and help businesses and cooperatives sign economic contracts on purchasing products, consuming products, and building product brands.

Son La province is supporting the maintenance and development of 285 safe agricultural and aquatic product supply chains, including 38 safe vegetable chains with an area of 318 hectares and an output of 12,646 tons/year; 178 safe fruit chains of mango, longan, plum, passion fruit, avocado, orange, grapefruit, strawberry, dragon fruit, etc., with an area of 4,298 hectares and an output of 49,519 tons/year; 5 coffee chains with an area of 2,160 hectares and an output of 4,518 tons/year; 10 tea chains with an area of 544 hectares and an output of 7,535 tons/year, etc.

Thank you, sir!