Supply exceeds demand, livestock farming suffers losses
Talking to us, Mr. Nguyen Van Dang, a livestock farmer in Thong Nhat district, Dong Nai province, lamented: "For more than half a year now, poultry prices have plummeted, falling below production costs, causing my family to suffer heavy losses. I never expected that raising chickens could cost us our land title if this situation continues."
The situation is so dire that Mr. Nguyen Thanh Son, Chairman of the Vietnam Poultry Association, when talking to us, said that the livestock industry, including poultry farming, has never faced such difficulties as it does now. On average, for every kilogram of poultry (mainly industrial chickens), farmers lose 6,000-8,000 VND. For example, from 2022 until now, the production cost of domestic chickens and crossbred chickens (industrial farming) is about 58,000 VND/kg, while the selling price is only 50,000-52,000 VND/kg. The reason is that the impact of economic sectors has affected the total demand of the livestock industry right in the domestic market.
According to Mr. Tong Xuan Chinh, Deputy Director of the Department of Livestock Production (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development), Vietnam is one of the countries with the largest poultry herd in the world. In the period 2018-2022, the poultry herd increased rapidly, from 435.9 million to 557.3 million. The average growth rate is 6.3%/year. In the first quarter of 2023, the poultry herd is estimated at 551.4 million, up 2.4%; poultry meat output is estimated at 563.2 thousand tons, up 4.2%; eggs are estimated at 4.7 billion, up 4.5% over the same period in 2022.
Explaining the rapid increase in poultry supply over the past 5 years, Mr. Tong Xuan Chinh said that after the outbreak of African swine fever, production management was directed to shift from pig farming to poultry farming. Another factor is that the poultry farming cycle is very fast, for colored chickens it is 5-5.5 cycles/year. Due to the rapid increase in demand for poultry production, in 2022 alone, Vietnam imported up to 3.4 million parent poultry (exceeding the previous year by only about 2 million). However, also in 2022, consumer demand for commercial poultry products decreased. This has caused difficulties for farmers.
Agreeing with this view, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Son cited: In the past 5 years, the number of poultry heads increased by 17%, meat output increased by 8.7%, egg output increased by 6.9% but the profit margin of poultry farming is decreasing. Meanwhile, we still import poultry products, in 2022 alone, the official import volume was 245,000 tons. In addition, a large amount of live chickens are smuggled and imported into our country. The proportion of chicken meat imported into our country is estimated to account for 20-25% of the total poultry meat output consumed domestically.
Along with the above situation, recently, livestock farming has encountered difficulties due to the continuous increase in prices of animal feed ingredients and input materials, causing the cost of livestock products to increase accordingly. Along with that, the Covid-19 epidemic and inflation have caused weak domestic demand, and the consumption of poultry products is always in an unstable state. These difficulties have caused livestock farmers, especially small-scale farmers, to face the risk of being gradually eliminated from the "game" right at "home".
Difficulties arise not only from objective factors but also from subjective factors in the livestock industry in general and poultry farming in particular, which still reveal a series of shortcomings. For example, the organization of production according to the chain, linked to the consumer market is still limited; the implementation of livestock farming processes to ensure biosafety, especially the construction of disease-free livestock areas and facilities, is still slow. The number of livestock areas and facilities granted disease-free certificates is still low. This is the reason why the export of livestock products is stuck with technical barriers, making it difficult to export.
Solution to save poultry farming
Faced with the current difficult situation of livestock farming, Mr. Tong Xuan Chinh said that a possible solution in the immediate future is to strengthen coordination, cooperation, and linkage in production within the bloc: Breeders, animal feed producers, breeders, veterinarians, slaughterhouses, processors, distributors, and distributors... cooperate with each other under the direction of the association, thereby reducing input costs by at least 10% and solving output factors.
Regarding the solution to save the poultry industry, according to Mr. Nguyen Thanh Son: The government should consider continuing to reduce and defer corporate income tax on livestock enterprises in the next 2-3 years so that they can recover and have capital to restore production. Another very important solution is to standardize statistical data. Because the current statistics on poultry farming do not seem to be really consistent with reality. The lack of accurate statistics has the consequence that we do not have a reliable basis to plan policies for the development of this industry. Along with that, it is necessary to strengthen the inspection and supervision of the quality of breeds and animal feed. Currently, due to the high cost of animal feed, many businesses have had to reduce the price of animal feed by reducing the quality to compete. In addition, the chaotic situation of breed production, everyone, every household making breeds makes it more difficult to control the quality of breeds, causing risks for farmers.
NGUYEN KIEM
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