An organic red-flesh dragon fruit orchard in Long An province’s Chau Thanh district. (Photo: VNA)“Hieveryone! Here is the dragon fruit garden of Que My ThanhCooperative. After 25 days of harvest, it has a thin peel and redflesh. Rest assured we never use any harmful chemicalsto spray the fruit. We guarantee that it is healthy andtasty,” he told viewers.
“Ilivestream various stages such as farming, harvesting and packaging tocreate consumer confidence about my product,” he said.
Amidthe COVID-19 pandemic, Chin was one of thousands of farmers whodecided to sell directly on social network sites such as Facebook,Zalo and others.
Noofficial statistics about the number of farmers using livestreamingexist, but it has become increasingly common. Livestreams on socialnetworks and e-commerce platforms in Vietnam have attracted hundredsof thousands of views a day.
NguyenDuc Tung, general secretary of the Vietnam Digital Agricultural Association,said that more farmers were selling online directly to consumerswithout intermediaries, which has helped lower prices.
Todo business online, farmers had learned more about photography,sales and communication skills to engender trust among consumers, hesaid.
Accordingto Nguyen Manh Tan, marketing director of Haravan, which providese-commerce and retail solutions, farmers only need a smartphone andFacebook account to conduct a livestream.
Sellingon Facebook or Zalo is easier than on e-commerce platforms, whichhave more requirements such as packaging specifications and legalconditions.
Sincepackaging, storage and transport can be done better by distributors,farmers often livestream their products directly from their fields or gardensto distributors.
Despiteonline trends, a number of high-quality, affordable agricultural productsthat meet export standards are still absent on major e-commerceplatforms such as Tiki, Sendo and Voso.
Oneof the main reasons for the low consumption of “clean” agriculturalproducts on e-commerce platforms is the life cycle of theproduct.
VuKim Hanh, chairwoman of the High Quality Vietnamese Product BusinessAssociation, said that fresh agricultural products were less popular one-commerce sites because the life cycle was too short.
NguyenDac Viet Dung, chairman of the board of directors of Sen Do Joint-StockCompany, said if the life cycles could be extended, buyerswould feel more secure about purchasing organic or clean products one-commerce sites.
Digitaltransformation
FarmerChin, who is the director of the Que My Thanh Dragon Fruit Cooperative inLong An Province’s Tan Tru District, decided to shift his family’sfour-hectare red-flesh dragon fruit garden to a natural directionwithout using chemicals, and embrace digital technology.
“Ihave gradually shifted to organic fertiliser and bio-products to grow qualitydragon fruit and use efficient irrigation methods like automaticspraying and drip irrigation to save water.”
Chinis one of the partner farmers of Food Connect, a project of the Food NetworkJoint-Stock Company, that aims to link farmers with consumers throughtechnology platforms.
Underthe project, training sessions on e-commerce and transparent productionprocesses are provided to farmers to help them save costs byavoiding a middleman, thereby reducing prices forconsumers.
Thecooperative, which has 22 hectares of cultivated dragon fruit, sells itsproducts to fruit chains across the country.
“Despitetheir somewhat ugly appearance and shape, the fruit is popularwith local consumers because of the quality. Also the first batch of dragonfruit was exported to Dubai,” Chin said. “Consumers can scan theQR code on the product to know the exact origin.”
DrTu Minh Thien, rector at Van Hien University in Ho Chi Minh City, said theuse of advanced technology had contributed to nearly 35 percent of thegrowth value of agriculture in Vietnam in the last five years.
Inthe field of irrigation, drip, sprinkler and underground irrigationsystems are being used on different terrains, making watering moreaccessible. Such systems are typically attached to a flow controllerwhich provides fertiliser for crops.
Techniquesfrom the biotechnology field are also being used in farming, suchas gene mapping of plants. Advanced techniques such as ELISA and PCRare used in the diagnosis and identification of viral diseasesof plants.
Inwet-rice production, biotechnology is also being used to breed ricevarieties, with slow-soluble fertilisers and saltwater warning systems inSoc Trang, Dong Thap, and Tra Vinh provinces.
“Biotechnologyapplications are an effective solution for sustainable agriculture and forlimiting the impact of climate change,” Dr Thien said.
Blockchainis another technology that is being used in product traceability andsupply chain management in Long An, Tien Giang, Dong Thap and other provinces.
In DongThap and Ben Tre provinces, technological advances have improvedthe monitoring of automatic irrigation systems by quicklyidentifying the watering level of a tree, for example, and alerting farmers tothe exact location of the water shortage area.
Thesystems, which use GPS and automatic routing to cover an entireplantation, are mounted on drones that fly 20-30 metres abovecrop fields, such as banana or fruit tree plantations.
Despitethese advances, high-tech applications in Vietnam’s agriculture have not beenwidely implemented on a household scale, and most are being usedat large enterprises and cooperatives due to the high investment costs andunstable market prices of fruits and vegetables.
Large enterprisesthat have invested in these applications include Vingroup, PAN Group, HoangAnh Gia Lai, and Loc Troi Group, among others.
Theyoffer farmers and cooperatives guidance on productionprocesses, train farmers who want to produce cleanproducts, and provide technical and seed support.
The enterprises alsoaim to improve quality control during processing and beforeharvesting, and to support product brand development.
NguyenThi Thanh Thuc, a member of the executive committee of the Vietnam DigitalAgriculture Association, said that digital transformation in agriculture mustbegin with farmers.
In supplychains, each farmer must be a “trader” who understands the market.The stakeholders of the chains should regularly communicate with eachother to maintain sustainable and long-term cooperation.
Thực hasbeen working with farmers to develop an agricultural e-Journal, create QRcodes, and promote the use of traceability of origin and geographicalindication (GIs).
Dr.Nguyen Quoc Toan, director of the Agro Processing and Market DevelopmentAuthority, said that digital transformation would ensure transparencyin the market.
“Farmersmust be the key players to ensure the success of digital transformation inagriculture,” he said.
Benefitswill include lower production costs, less waste, less water consumption andbetter quality, according to the director.
Advancesin machinery in recent years have helped to expand the scale,speed and productivity of farm equipment, leading to more efficientcultivation of more land. Seeds, irrigation and fertilisers havevastly improved as well, helping farmers increase yields.
Artificialintelligence (AI), analytics, connected sensors and other emergingtechnologies further increase yields, improve the efficiency of water andother inputs, and build sustainability and resilience.
Automationtechnology, drones, spectral imagery and the use of robots andunmanned aerial vehicles also help to reduce operational expendituresand labour costs.
Inaddition, increased use of livestock biometrics ensures maintenance oflivestock health and has a direct impact on the increase in yield of dairyproducts.
Challenges
Incoming years, the agricultural sector is set to face seriouschallenges. Growing populations, rising affluence and urbanisation, forexample, have increased the threat to global food security.
The worldpopulation is expected to increase by 2.2 billion by 2050 and demand forfood will rise by 50 percent, according to reports from globalorganisations.
Duringthis period, climate change is expected to reduce harvests by 17 percent, whilearable land will shrink by 20 percent.
Amore resilient food future will rely on agricultural research anddevelopment, and better alignment of government finance and incentives forfarmers who use sustainable and climate-smart production processes.
Itwill also rely on a steep change in access to information, innovativetechnologies, and finance to enhance the resilience of millions ofsmall-scale farming households whose livelihoods are most critically impactedby climate change.
Productivity and asufficient supply of quality food must increase, while natural resourcesremain protected.
NguyenKhac Minh Tri, CEO of Mimosa Technology Ltd., said that new applicationsin agriculture such as IoT (Internet of Things), blockchain, big data andAI would open up a new era in which new practices would producemore food with fewer resources and without harming the environment.
However,the transformation progress remains slow in Vietnam, according to Tri. Mostapplications that are now in the pilot phase aim to prove the benefits tofarmers and other stakeholders in agricultural supply chains.
Althoughsome farmers are now able to manage irrigation on smartphoneswith IoT solutions or mark their brand with QR codes for traceability on blockchainplatforms, this is only happening with a few early adopters.
Applicationof technology is in the early stages, and more time is needed to transformtechnology from “good-to-have” to “must-have”, according to Tri.
Sincemore than 70 percent of Vietnam’s agricultural products are from 22million smallholder farmers, local agri-businesses should notdepend solely on major corporations to promote innovativesolutions.
Solutionsmust be identified for smallholder farmers to apply technology,but smallholder farmers entering mass markets is not an easy taskbecause farmers have used the same practices for thousands of years.Changing their mindsets will take a long time, according to Tri.
Oneof the main obstacles is limited capital, because switching to high-techagriculture requires a considerable up-front investment, experts have said.
Anothermajor problem is market and consumer confidence. Building brands andwinning customer confidence are both essential for Vietnamese brands sothey can take advantage of major export markets like the EU under the newEU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA).
FarmerChin from Long An Province, who embraced technology early, is also awareof the obstacles that must be overcome.
“Farmersare willing to embrace digital transformation and switch to naturalfarming as long as stable sales are ensured. I will continue to dolivestreaming so that everyone can understand how dragon fruit is being grownwithout chemicals.”/.
VNA
