Goodbye cottage industry, hello industrial farms

Monday, December 5, 2011

Vietnam plans to modernize its livestock breeding sector, shifting to industrial farms from household-based breeding, according to Vietnam News.

The Vietnam Livestock Development Strategy aims to increase pig numbers to 35 million in 2020 from 27.37 million last year. The centrally-based economy will offer preferential policies to encourage individuals and corporations to develop livestock production and shift to industrial farms along with slaughterhouses and meat processing factories.

It also planned to increase industrial livestock feed production to 16.3 million tonnes by 2015 and 19.2 million tonnes by 2020, up from 10.5 million in 2010. The quality of pork meat is also expected to increase.

There are an estimated 47.37 million workers last year, more than half in agriculture.
According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency fact book, Vietnamese agriculture's share of economic output has shrunk from 25 per cent of Gross Domestic Product in 2000 to about 20 per cent as industry grew. The workforce grew by one million people last year. The inflation rate was nearly 12 per cent.

In October, the wholesale price of pork fell 25 per cent to C$2.53. Retail prices for pork were reported at C $4.59 to C$5.56 per kilogram. BP