Vietnamese carrots: Opportunities still remain open

Vietnamese carrots in Hai Duong province

With an area of ​​more than 350 hectares, Duc Chinh commune is a locality with a long tradition of producing Vietnamese carrots in Hai Duong province. Not only targeting to the domestic market, Vietnamese carrot brand here has been exported to countries such as Korea, Japan, Malaysia, the Middle East in recent years.

Vietnamese carrots in Hai Duong province
Vietnamese carrots in Hai Duong province

By this time, Vietnamese carrots in Duc Chinh commune area has basically completed the seeding process. According to farmers’ forecast, due to the warm weather and no heavy rain, the winter carrots in 2019 will probably continue to be successful. This is also a concern for consumption, avoiding repetition of the fall in prices like the winter crop in 2018.

Ms. Luyen, a famer in An Phu village, Duc Chinh commune is planting three hectares of carrots.  She is also the owner of a processing factory of fresh carrots for domestic consumption and export. She said, “In the winter crop of 2018, in addition to domestic consumption in the southern provinces, we processed more than 1,000 MTs of fresh carrots for exporting companies. The main markets for Vietnamese carrots are South Korea and Malaysia”.

Regarding export markets, Ms. Luyen assessed: “Importing countries have increasingly strict requirements on design and product quality. In addition to strict control of plant quarantine procedures, chemical residue control, there is an increasing requirement for carrot length and tuber redness”.

“Accordingly, the Vietnam carrot’s head must absolutely not be blue. Besides, the uniformity should be very high. This is something that Vietnamese carrots are far behind that of Chinese carrots in the same export markets”, she added.

A processing factory of Vietnamese carrots
A processing factory of Vietnamese carrots

Mr. Hoang, another owner of a carrot purchasing and exporting facility, confested that Chinese carrots have the advantage of being beautiful, large, and uniform. However, Vietnam carrots are better quality, with a natural aroma and sweetness.

The three most potential markets for Vietnamese carrots are Japan, South Korea and Malaysia. In 2018, many exporting companies from Vietnam and China came here to buy fresh carrots for export to other countries. Each export time maintains the quantity from 7 to 10 containers.

Also according to Mr. Hoang, in the winter of 2018, Vietnam carrot brand was recognized as a good-quality vegetable. Even the Japanese market only imports carrots from Vietnam without using carrots from China.

A field of Vietnamese carrots in Duc Chinh commune
A field of Vietnamese carrots in Duc Chinh commune

In addition, although the purchasing price of carrots in 2018 has decreased compared to previous years, but in general, it has remained at a profitable level for both farmers and exporters.

“Recently, the local government has conducted many trade promotion programs as well as trade and technology transfer conferences. As a result, in the last 2 years, the number of carrots exported to international markets has increased by 2-3 times compared to previous years”, Mr. Hoang explained.

Agreeing with these assessments, a director of an exporting company of Vietnamese carrots, said “The most restrictive point of carrot in Vietnam is that the percentage of tubers that are qualified for export is very low”.

Seeding process of Vietnam carrots
Seeding process of Vietnam carrots

At present, Chinese carrots exported to South Korea are subject to the import tax rate of 30%. In the meanwhile, Vietnam carrots exported to this market have a tax rate of 0%, so the prospects of exporting will be very bright.

The problem is that how to exploit the advantages of winter crops, reduce production costs for winter vegetables. Although the land area in the North is very large in the winter, it cannot accumulate into a large enough area to bring mechanization into production.

Therefore, for example, with carrots, product models are very uneven, production costs are teamed up, reducing competitiveness.

Vietnamese source: https://nongnghiep.vn