August 19, 2011
Vietnam's Northern farmers encouraged to cultivate more soy
Due to increasing demand of soy for cooking oil and animal feed processing plants, Northern Vietnamese farmers should expand soy plantation, according to experts.
The country needs 3.1 million tonnes of soy this year, 4.2 million tonnes in 2015 and five million tonnes in 2020 for local processing of oil and animal feed, Le Ba Lich, president of the Vietnam Animal Feed Association said.
Last year, the country imported 2.76 million tonnes of soy products worth US$1.7 billion for processing, equivalent to 3.7 million tonnes of soy, Lich said.
During the year, Vietnamese farmers grew 200,000 hectares of soy and harvested 200,000 tonnes, meeting one fifth of the country's demand, said Tran Thanh Quang, chairman cum general director of Quang Minh Group.
Quang Minh recently started operating a soy processing plant in the northern province of Hung Yen using 365,000 tonnes of soy every year. It plans to build a second plant consuming three times of soy in 2012.
Quang Minh Group will assist farmers with technology and buy harvested soy from farmers in the northern provinces, Quang said.
Soy is offered at VND15,000/kg (US$0.72) compared to VND7,000 (US$0.34) in the US and India. However, this price is not attractive to Vietnamese farmers due to high production costs.
Out-of-dated production technology and lack of good varieties are attributed to the high production costs in soy growing, said Quang.