Deputy Director of the Department of Livestock and Veterinary Medicine Pham Kim Dang said that the livestock industry is facing many difficulties, such as small-scale livestock farming still accounts for a high proportion, people’s awareness of biosafety livestock farming and proactive disease prevention for livestock and poultry is still limited.
The disease situation in livestock herds is potentially risky as avian influenza, African swine fever, foot and mouth disease, and lumpy skin disease in buffalo and cows have appeared in some localities.
Livestock farmers still lack the capital and land to invest and develop production. Environmental pollution in livestock farming has not been thoroughly resolved. In addition, most of the sources of animal feed and raw materials depend on imports from other countries (billions of USD per year).
Exporting products has not been as expected (in the past 5 years, the export value has only reached 400 million to more than 500 million USD/year, not commensurate with the potential).
There are still many small-scale slaughterhouses for cattle and poultry that do not ensure food safety, the number of concentrated slaughterhouses is small, and the actual capacity is still low compared to the designed capacity.
The market for livestock products still has shortcomings in connecting production and the market. There isn’t much deep processing, and the intermediary stage still accounts for high profits.
According to Nguyen Hung Thinh (Phuc Tho Agricultural Products Production and Trading Cooperative, Hanoi), the output price of livestock products and the price of breeding animals always fluctuates and is unstable.
For example, recently, the price of chicken eggs in the northern provinces has decreased, at times only reaching 1,100 VND/egg, while the production cost is about 1,500 VND/egg, causing many households raising egg-laying chickens to suffer.
The reason is that in early 2024, the price of chicken eggs was high (about 2,000 VND/egg), making profits, so livestock owners continuously increased their herds, causing output to increase, leading to supply exceeding demand.
According to experts, for the livestock industry to flourish, localities need to actively implement the Law on Livestock, restructure the livestock industry by the new context and take advantage of the strengths of each region and each key livestock to improve production efficiency.
It is necessary to strengthen the role of enterprises and associations to balance and regulate production closer to the market, expand livestock farming by applying VietGAP’s good agricultural practices, and encourage linkage models in ecological, green, and organic livestock farming to bring high economic value.
More attention should be paid to developing quality livestock breeds to meet production needs, controlling diseases in livestock herds, thoroughly preventing illegal trading and transportation of livestock and poultry across borders and strengthening inspection of veterinary hygiene conditions at livestock farms, slaughterhouses, and animal product processing facilities.
On the other hand, it is necessary to focus on developing animal feed raw material areas (corn, potatoes, cassava, etc.) in the Central Highlands to gradually reduce dependence on imported animal feed raw materials.
According to Dr La Van Kinh (Ho Chi Minh the City University of Technology), it is necessary to popularise the effective and safe use of animal feed for farmers, encourage them to utilise by-products as biological feed and mix their feed to reduce costs, thereby reducing production costs.
Discussing this issue further, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Environment Phung Duc Tien said that the five projects on breeds, nutritional feed, processing, livestock equipment and environmental treatment, science and technology in the Livestock Development Strategy for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 2045, have created a favourable environment for businesses.
Along with that, it is necessary to create more cohesion between the State, businesses and livestock farmers and deploy the construction of disease-free livestock facilities and areas that meet the requirements of the World Organization for Animal Health, especially in key commodity livestock areas for export.
In addition, provinces and cities should have more mechanisms and policies to allocate land for livestock farming, prioritise land allocation and land lease with preferential policies according to the provisions of the law on land for breeding facilities, concentrated and industrial livestock farms with sufficient capacity and at the same time, attract more businesses to invest in the field of slaughter and processing, promoting the growth of the livestock industry in the coming period.
