Sweet potato farmers hit hard as exports to China slowdown

The COVID-19 pandemic has been heavily affecting the transportation and consumption of farming products. Japanese purple-flesh sweet potato prices have been dropped to the lowest in the last few years.

In Binh Tan District of the southern province of Vinh Long, about 850 ha of sweet potato with the production of about 30,000 tonnes are ready for harvest.

For years, China has been a major sweet potato importer of Vietnam. Currently, it’s also sweet potato harvesting time in China. The complicated development of the COVID-19 pandemic caused more difficulties to the export of sweet potato to China at this time.

 As a result, sweet potato prices have dropped to only VND600,000 per tonnes or even lower if the potato is sold at fields.

Wholesaler Trinh Ngoc Thanh of Binh Minh Town said that his Chinese partners stopped purchasing sweet potato indefinitely while the sweet potato was ready for harvest.

Luu Duong Tu, owner of an enterprise that exports sweet potato to China said that in the past time, it exported three containers of sweet potato to China daily but now, only one container for two days by sea.

“Exports by sea face risks and cost more, so enterprises prefer reducing or halting the exports,” he said.

With such record low prices of sweet potato, farmers nearly lose all. The production cost for every 1,000 sq.m of sweet potato is about VND 15-20 million. If farmers rent land to grow sweet potato, they would have to pay an additional VND 3-5 million per 1,000 sq.m.

Nguyen Van Liem, vice director of Vinh Long Province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development said that as a short-term solution, the department creates favourable conditions to boost consumption in the domestic market.

Agencies, organisations and individuals were called on to buy sweet potato, helping farmers overcome difficulties in farming product consumption.

In the coming time, authorities called on local farmers for replacing sweet potato with other crops.

The move aimed to reduce sweet potato supply and avoid harvesting time coincide with the one in China. In another hand, stopping growing sweet potato will give time to restore the quality of soil and help reduce diseases for sweet potato in the coming seasons when the market has more positive moves.

Meanwhile, the agriculture department would assist farmers to master the farming technique to improve the quality of their farming products, reduce the production cost, apply GlobalGAP and VietGAP and develop codes for their farming areas to better meet market requirements.

Liêm said that the province aimed to attract more food processing companies to diversify sweet potato products. In addition, local authorities would create favourable conditions for the companies to connect with sweet potato growers.

The agriculture department would cooperate with local authorities to strictly oversee farming production, especially the production of key products like rice, jackfruit and potato.

They would also follow farming products’ prices in the market to timely inform and consult farmers to adjust their production plans, which would help to avoid the backlog of farming products and their dropping prices.

Vinh Long Province’s agriculture department wanted ministries and central agencies to continue paying attention to farming product consumption and organising trade promotion programmes for farming products.

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Ministry of Industry and Trade are expected to continue negotiating with Chinese agencies to open borders for Vietnamese farming products including sweet potato from Vinh Long Province.

Organisations and individuals are helping consuming sweet potato for Binh Tan farmers. The province’s Youth Union bought more than 8 tonnes.

The province’s young entrepreneurs association bought 6 tonnes. Youth Union and the Vinh Long University of Technical Education helped transport sweet potato from Binh Tan District to Vinh Long City.

From May 27, the sweet potato has been available at the province’s Youth Centre, each kilo of sweet potato is only VND3,000.