Talking to the press recently about the issue of agricultural product consumption, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan emphasized that it was time to say no to "rescuing" agricultural products, especially forms of spontaneous "rescuing". Instead, it necessary to form models of connection and consumption of agricultural products in a methodical and regular manner, ensuring safety and efficiency.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan

For many years, when agricultural products are in harvest, sites calling for "rescuing" agricultural products in big cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City is no longer a strange thing. Many believe that this is not a sustainable method and can affect the image of Vietnamese agricultural products. What is your opinion?

China's Minister of Commerce Vuong Van Dao: China is willing to increase imports of high-quality agricultural and aquatic products from Vietnam.

The Chinese side highly encourages and is willing to increase imports of high-quality agricultural and aquatic products from Vietnam. Currently, to facilitate the customs clearance of agricultural and aquatic products of Vietnam, the authorities at Chinese border gates have simplified the customs clearance process, reducing the inspection rate for various types of low-risk fruits among nine Vietnamese fruits allowed to be imported into China. The Chinese side has also set up ten fruit gathering areas and four food gathering areas at border gates on the Chinese side to support gathering agricultural products in the peak harvest period of Vietnam.

Regarding the request for exemption from inspection and testing for Sars-Cov-2 for Vietnam's frozen agricultural and aquatic products, which is a measure applied generally to all countries. This measure is for disease prevention purposes only and will be adjusted according to each country's specific Covid-19 control situation.

Đuc Quang (record)

It must be affirmed that I always respect the volunteer spirit of the people. In fact, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and social organizations are not able to take care of the connection to the consumption of agricultural products for the people.

Therefore, it needs many models of voluntary supply-demand connection, and consumption of agricultural products. But those models must be standardized to both ensure the consumption of agricultural products for farmers and help farmers change the farming process step by step, maintaining the brand image of agricultural products.

We do not have the right to prohibit voluntary organizations from selling agricultural products to help farmers, even at some point, it also helps relieve pressure. However, it is important to direct those volunteering points in a professional manner. Because doing volunteer work improperly can cause inadequacies, the image of agricultural products will no longer be attractive when displayed on the sidewalk. There are even reports that some people take advantage of the "rescue" to decrease the prices of agricultural products, because if they do not "rescue" them, the agricultural products are not so cheap.

Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Vietnam Women's Union, the Vietnam Farmers' Union and the Central Youth Union have worked together to establish a model of agricultural product consumption during the pandemic to ensure safety and build a new image for the agricultural production chain, removing the image of "rescue". Could you tell us more about this relatively new cooperation?

In collaboration with the Vietnam Farmers' Union, the Central Youth Union, and the Vietnam Women's Union to build connection points for agricultural product consumption, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development wants to affirm that, in addition to continuing to expand the export market, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is also interested in the domestic market of 100 million people, at the same time reshaping the entire supply-demand chain to be more proactive, gradually reducing spontaneous production, and spontaneous "rescuing".

In fact, the Vietnam Farmers' Union or the Vietnam Women's Union have connected and helped consume agricultural products for farmers. However, this time, the organizations and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will create a model of the connection point for agricultural products, ensuring the consumption standards and ensuring the regulations on pandemic prevention, creating another image. I hope that the model of four units will form an ecosystem, helping to achieve sustainable development goals, transparent agriculture development, with the participation of all parties.

The support point for agricultural product consumption will have four logos of four units to prove that this is a well-organized selling point of agricultural products.

Our slogan is: Cherish the value of Vietnamese agricultural products, share and connect with love to overcome the pandemic.

Notably, the model of the four units is not only applied during this pandemic but is the foundation and basis to change people's thinking about farming, then agriculture will no longer have seasonal risks and supply - demand interruption.

As the Minister said, besides promoting exports and consumption of agricultural products also focuses on the domestic market. How will this be promoted in the future?

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is about to work with nine large retail groups to discuss the plan to establish the Vietnam Agricultural Products Consumption Association. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will proactively provide information, a supply-side database on the size, quantity, and quality, ensuring traceability, certifying safety standards. The retail centres and large distribution corporations can connect to a supply-side database to set up a more proactive consumption plan.

At this point, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is determined not to let the situation of looking for sales after harvesting, at the beginning of the season, localities have provided the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development with production plans and expected output. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will assign the Bureau of Agricultural Product Processing and Market Development to transfer that data to the association for analysing and planning consumption together. When connection between supply and demand is standardized, the farmers also have to change the farming process and be responsible for their products

Thank you, Sir

With a safe agricultural product consumption model, agricultural products are harvested, preliminarily processed and packaged according to the correct process to ensure fresh products reaching consumers. Agricultural products from pandemic-hit areas need to have a certificate of safety such as: The shipment has a clear origin of the growing area, the date of preliminary processing, packaging (transports have been sprayed with disinfectant), drivers have negative test result for Sars-CoV-2. 

In order to operate safe selling points of agricultural products, the Vietnam Farmers' Union will promptly notify the local Department of Agriculture and Rural Development or directly inform the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development about the area of agricultural products that are about to be harvested without output.

In localities with labour shortages due to distance, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development proposes the Farmers' Union, the Women's Union and the Youth Union participate in supporting farmers in harvesting agricultural products.

It is expected that on the morning of June 8, the first ten sales points of the Central Youth Union in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City will officially open.