Every week the most recent agricultural developments of Vietnam in your mailbox?
Fresh Studio offers a weekly newsletter with the latest news updates in the Vietnamese agricultural sector focusing on topics in the field of business, food safety, nutrition, gender equality, livelihoods, environment and science & technology. Our newsletter is send every Monday and provided in English.
See an example of our newsletter by clicking the link below.
The Food, Agri and Aqua Business Sector Committee (FAASC) of the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham) organised a dialogue (27th of May 2015) between Government representatives and companies regarding the importance of traceability and legal enforcement for the control of food safety.
Food safety is still an issue in Vietnam and this limits Vietnam in exporting food, agriculture and aquaculture products. Too frequent products are blocked at the border of the importing country due to existence of high levels of certain heavy metals, bacteria, virus, moulds or other prohibited substances in products. This costs money and damages the reputation of Vietnamese products.
Currently various free trade agreements, such as the EU-VN Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are being negotiated. For 2015 the export goal for agricultural products is set at 32 billion USD. To reach this goal, it is important that food safety issues will be addressed.
The legal framework exists and the Government takes measures to improve food safety, however it is not enough. There are various ways to achieve the goal of safe food. Traceability and legal enforcement are two of such ways that can support the improvement of food safety.
The dialogue has brought together representatives of various departments and agencies of the Vietnamese Government representatives of several embassies, international organisations and relevant industry and professional Vietnamese associations. Several keynote speakers were invited to present about product traceability legal enforcement:
“Traceability systems are an important tool in controlling food safety, because farmers will realize that a company can, in case food safety violations occur, always trace from which farm a product is originating. But this is just one of the elements which are needed to make Vietnam more successful in exports of agricultural products. This is a task which the private sector can control and implement itself, but one of the larger bottlenecks for successful exports is completely in the hands of the Vietnamese government: market access of Vietnamese products to neighbouring countries. Van Wijk gave the example of the trade balance for fruit between Thailand and Vietnam. While the Thai exports of fruits to Vietnam has a value of US$ 178 mln per year, Vietnam is only exporting about US$ 10 mln. This negative trade balance is caused by the fact that Vietnam is only allowed by Thailand to export dragon fruit, and for vegetables, only sweet potato. This is a very unbalanced situation, as Thai mandarins, rambutans, mangosteens and many other fruits flood the Vietnamese market. Vietnam could export a lot more fruits to Thailand, or other ASEAN countries, but unfortunately little market access has been arranged.”
Download all presentations at www.eurochamvn.org
After the presentations a lively and interesting discussion took place between representatives of the industry, government officials of the relevant ministries as well as representatives of international organisations.
The initiative ‘Women as Inclusive Business partners’ from BoP Innovation Center and ICCO Cooperation supports the private sector in strategy development to better engage women in their value chains in low-income markets, ranging from producers to consumers.
15 good practices have been analyzed of Dutch and international companies, ranging from SME’s or cooperatives to multinational corporations. The practices illustrate ‘the secrets’ to build a successful business case; which benefits both companies and women. Fresh Studio actively took part in developing one of these successful business cases:
The Fruit Republic (TFR) is a Dutch owned company in Vietnam supplying international quality fruits and vegetables to both international and domestic customers. To expand its vegetable sourcing to North Vietnam The Fruit Republic involved in a vegetable value chain to facilitate access for small-scale vegetable farmers to urban markets in Hanoi.
These smallholder vegetable farmers in North Vietnam were not yet connected to formal retail chains in urban areas. The absence of proper planning, coordination, collection and storage and distribution systems for fresh vegetables were considered to be major bottlenecks to connect these vegetable smallholders to such higher value urban markets.
The vegetable value chain in which The Fruit Republic was involved was built on the extensive local experience of the Vietnamese company Fresh Studio. During the last 5 years they have developed successful strategies to improve the performance of Vietnamese fresh food producers in Vietnam and other Asian countries.
Read more about the BoP Inc & ICCO initiative and all its cases
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Source: BoP Innovation Center
Publication date: May 2015
A food safety crisis in Vietnam has opened the door to smallholder vegetable producers in the north-western highlands to pioneer an agribusiness model that is now supplying Hanoi with certified safe produce.
New vegetable supply chains developed in an ACIAR agribusiness project have linked Vietnamese farmers in poor highland villages in Moc Chau district with the modern retailers that are changing the way people shop in Hanoi. The public private partnership (PPP) involved the Northern Mountainous Agriculture and Forestry Science Institute, the Research Institute of Fruits and Vegetables, Hanoi University of Agriculture, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and Fresh Studio.
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Source: ACIAR – Partners magazine
Publication date: April 2015
Vietnam is in the process of providing the food necessary for health and growth. While nutritional food is essential in a daily diet, food systems and nutritional intake are changing. The trend in Vietnam is too little-too bad (low nutritional status and low quality) or too much-too sweet/fat.
ACIAR and University of Adelaine organized a small discussion workshop on the 1st and 2nd of December 2014 with the title ‘Nutrition sensitive agriculture- looking through a nutrition lens’. Nutrition sensitive agriculture aims to maximize the impact of nutrition outcomes for the poor, while minimizing the unintended negative nutritional consequences of agricultural interventions and policies on the poor, especially women and young children (World Bank, 2013).
The workshop assembled researchers, development specialists and agencies working in the area of measuring nutritional impact, food security, diet diversity and consumption to share current research findings, indicators and approaches.
Several keynote speakers were invited to share their thoughts on the different nutrition topics in different areas.
Investments have to be made to develop modules. Vietnam is a good starting place, since a lot of good national data is available (e.g. World vision, NIN, Unicef) and the capacity is there to measure the data in order to develop modules, to check the robustness of different nutrition methods and to create interventions to meet the challenges.
A fruitful platform where lessons learned were shared and future initiatives and nutritional interventions collaboration were made.
Download the other presentations here:
As part of the CBI Food Ingredients Export Coaching Program (ECP), Fresh Studio provided a two-day workshop on Supply Chain Management (SCM) in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City for pre-selected high potential food ingredient business ranging from honey, spices to tea.
The aim of the SCM workshop was threefold:
The workshop was in collaboration with Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade) and the Center for the Promotion of Imports from Developing Countries (CBI).
During the workshop Mr. Siebe van Wijk (Managing Director of Fresh Studio) provided insights in the flows, forces, dynamics, evolutionary path and the key functional processes in SCM. The subjects were illustrated with different case studies in the field.
Important message of the presentation was: “Companies who want to export to EU market need to understand their chain and they should be able to control it.”
“This workshop was a good chance for me to learn about supply chain and value chain methodically. The games and case studies during the course were very meaningful and applicable. I will bring back and apply these useful knowledge to my company”
Ms. Nguyen Thi Truc Loan – BaseaFood Hochiminh Branch.
In order to adapt the information and to improve the SCM of each participating business the flow of information was interspersed with (group) assignments. By analyzing their own supply chain, companies were challenged to identify and share their strong and weak points and to turn issues into working solutions.
Besides insights in SCM, Mr. Richard de Boer (Managing director of Control Union) provided information about his company services: certification, inspection and warehouse monitoring services. A much appreciate presentation for the food ingredient businesses, since quality is a frequent issue and the standards of the EU market for agricultural products is high.
The workshop was an effective platform for the food ingredient businesses to gain knowledge about SCM, to make the issues in the chain more transparent and to learn from each other.
“I hope that the knowledge I gained in these 2 days will help my company to become successful in the CBI program and to penetrate the EU market”
Mr. Bien, Hagimex JSC.
GLOBALG.A.P. is proud to announce the first aquaculture group certification for small-scale pangasius farmers in Vietnam. This major step is part of the Public Private Partnership – Sustainable Pangasius Supply Chain Program (PPP-SPSP) in Tra Vinh province. Fresh Studio was contracted by GIZ and IDH to develop a GLOBALG.A.P. certified smallholder pangasius farmer group in Tra Vinh Province.
At the GLOBALG.A.P. workshop that took place at Vietfish on 6 August 2014, Mr. Truong The Van, the Vice Chairman of the Tra Vinh Fisheries Association, shared the challenges and benefits for small-scale producers of GLOBALG.A.P. Certification in general, and GLOBALG.A.P. Group Certification in particular. He specifically highlighted the cooperation promotion between farms. He also outlined how raising producer awareness of Good Aquaculture Practices and environmental protection benefits the aquaculture sector as a whole and consumers worldwide.
An added advantage of GLOBALG.A.P. Group Certification for small-scale producers in Vietnam in particular is that they immediately comply with the national government’s decree requiring all pangasius farming activities to be certified against sustainable certification systems by 31 December 2015.
This is a milestone in GLOBALG.A.P. Aquaculture Group Certification and a major step forward in the aquaculture sector. Small-scale aquaculture producers organized in groups with a shared Quality Management System can now reap the benefits of a long established and successful form of GLOBALG.A.P. Certification, one that GLOBALG.A.P. certified Fruit & Vegetable producers have benefited from for years.
“I congratulate the Tra Vinh Cooperative for pioneering GLOBALG.A.P. Aquaculture Group Certification in Vietnam and around the world,” said Kristian Moeller, GLOBALG.A.P. CEO. “ Almost 100,000 fruit & vegetable farmers, that’s more than 70 percent of our GLOBALG.A.P. certified producers worldwide, are organized in groups and covered under GLOBALG.A.P. Group Certification. The first group small-scale farmer certificate in aquaculture confirms that achieving our high integrity requirements for food safety and sustainability systems on farm via a group generates benefits to small-scale producers that can also be enjoyed by the aquaculture sector. The European retail markets have a particular interest in connecting to smaller producers to secure their sourcing. I am pleased to announce that the majority of our German retailers are introducing and implementing policies that require GLOBALG.A.P. Aquaculture Certification as a food safety baseline for their entire aquaculture range.”
— Kristian Moeller, GLOBALG.A.P. CEO.
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Source: GlobalGAP.com
Publication date: August 2014
This development is a result of the collaboration with project:
GLOBALG.A.P. group certification for small scale Pangasius farmers in Tra Vinh
Fresh Studio was contracted to develop a Globalgap certified smallholder pangasius farmer group in Tra Vinh Province …
A groundbreaking ceremony marked an important milestone and is considered a first encouraging step for the development of sustainable dairy zones in Vietnam, the company said in a press statement.
This project is a partnership between FrieslandCampina, De Heus, Wageningen UR, Friesian Agro Consultancy B.V, Fresh Studio, Ha Nam authorities and the Dutch Government within the Facility for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Food Security (FDOV) for the 2014-2018 period.
It is expected in the project that by 2018, three dairy zones will be established, with each zone having about 50 dairy farms, to produce at least 7,000 tons of fresh milk per year and create approximately 350 jobs.
After five years of participation in the project, each dairy farm is expected to have a herd of 50 to 80 head of cattle. In addition, the project aims to develop and implement training programs, set up a dairy cattle feed supply chain, and provide financial services for farmers participating in the project.
As the main partner in the project, FrieslandCampina undertakes the roles of management, execution and direct investment, and will establish three specialized dairy zones in Vietnam with two pilot dairy farms in each zone.
The company will help farmers gain access to preferential loans; provide training and supply technical advice for farmers; and develop and establish procurement and control systems to ensure good milk quality as well as the consumption of fresh milk at competitive prices.
The dairy zone in Ha Nam is considered a model of public-private partnership in close collaboration with national and provincial government agencies such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the provincial government of Ha Nam, and Ha Nam’s Department of Agriculture.
FrieslandCampina has been in Vietnam for over 18 years, with more than 1.5 billion high-quality milk units supplied a year and with many favorite brands such as Dutch Lady, Friso, Yomost, and Fristi.
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Source: www.talkvietnam.com
Publication date: July 2014
Vietnams’ population consists of approximately 90 million people. Vegetables play an important role in their daily meals. Within the pilot-project Horti Dalat, Dutch companies are supporting the Vietnamese horti-sector with the development of modern greenhouses vegetables production.
The rapid growth of the Vietnamese population and pace and scope of retail development results in a high demand for quality products, food safety, stable supply and sustainable vegetable production.
In the Dutch article ‘Vietnamese groente gaat de kas in’, Flip van Koesveld and Huub Schepers of Applied Plant Reseach (Wageningen UR) discuss the vegetable production transition in Vietnam; from ‘outside’ to ‘inside’. For Vietnamese farmers it is smart choice to produce vegetable in greenhouses: “Shortly there are 3 reasons: less plant diseases, a reduced amount of fertilizer and higher yields. Greenhouses for vegetable production keep many issues ‘outside’ while the yield is increasing”.
Fresh Studio is, according to Van Koesveld, an important player in the chain. The company supports and creates breakthrough innovative interventions in the Asian food sector. “Fresh Studio plays a central role. We can give input how Vietnamese farmers should produce vegetables, but we do not speak their languages. For this, you need a strong local partner. One who can train farmers and who continues the project after finishing in 2016.”
+ Read the complete article (Language: Dutch)
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Source: Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland
Publication date: July 2014
In collaboration with New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, Fresh Studio brings Zespri Kiwifruit straight to the Filipino audience. The largest kiwifruit marketer in the world was featured in a three-day event that showcased the best products from New Zealand.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise organized its annual trade fair that showcased and promoted New Zealand companies, products and services in the Philippines. Held at the Glorietta Mall grounds in Makati City, the event ran from June 20-22, treating visitors to a diverse range of food, non-food items and other activities.
Together with NZTE and Zespri’s Philippine importer, Fresh Studio introduced the latest Zespri variety to consumers visiting the event – SunGold Kiwifruit. The activity was a combination of product sampling and selling.
The objective of the event was to promote Zespri SunGold – provide significant exposure to the brand and allow Filipino consumers a first-hand experience of Zespri’s latest product in the market.
Zespri SunGold had a very warm reception from the Filipino audience. The distinct tropical sweet and refreshing qualities rightly match the Filipino palate. All throughout the event, visitors enjoyed and attest to a pleasantly unique and delightful flavor. Staffs were available on the ground as well to complement this experience with a consistent message of health – Zespri Kiwifruit is truly one of the world’s most nutritious fruits.
Before the end of the 3-day event, visitors gave an overwhelming response: SunGold inventories were sold out, with still many customers clamoring for more!
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