Viet Nam to grow more maize, soybeans, less rice

Farmers in Viet Nam are considering expanding their maize and soybean growing areas, to sell to animal feed enterprises.

Being an agriculture country, Viet Nam lacks materials for making animal feed. Pham Duc Binh, Deputy Chair of the Viet Nam Animal Feed Association blamed the short supply on the unreasonable agriculture production development policies, reports Vietnam.net.

The problem, according to Binh, does not lie in the low capability of the domestic agriculture production, but on the unreasonable decisions about what plants to grow.
Animal feed producers have been complaining for many years about the lack of materials. However, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development still decided to scale down the maize and soybean growing area, which has made feed producers more and more reliant on imports.

Also according to Binh, if animal feed producers can seek domestic material sources, they would not have to import materials any more, which would allow them to cut down expenses.

For the last many years, growing rice has always been in the focus of the agricultural production. Rice has been grown in the localities with unfavorable soil conditions, which brings low yield.

The State’s policies on agricultural expansion have been targeting rice growing, while very few preferences have been offered to the growing of other kinds of plants.