Addressing the event, Politburo member Nhan spoke highly of the Vietnam Cooperative Alliance (VCA)’s thorough preparations for the inauguration of the supermarket chain, which he said was a pleasure to Vietnamese cooperatives, Vietnam’s agriculture sector and Vietnamese farmers.
He hailed the significance of the model in connecting farmers and cooperatives, as well as businesses, in order to consume farm produce, and in measuring the demand of consumers in response to producers.
The VFF President expressed his hope that the Cooperative Union of Agricultural Consumption (UCA) would sign contracts with foreign partners to increase consumption of Vietnam’s agricultural products while building more cooperatives consuming farm produce in regions across the country, thereby selling safe food to Vietnamese people as well as foreigners.
In the past time, the VCA has built cooperative models connecting enterprises and farmers, and directed its provincial affiliates to register the provinces’ key products to serve the formation of national key commodities, towards building the value chain.
So far, the alliance has directed the building of 27 large-scale key goods value chains, including vegetables, fruits, green-skin grapefruits, lemons, coconuts, shrimp, pigs, coffee and cocoa, with all provinces having registered their key products.
The UCA, established by the VCA with the motto, “For the People’s Life—For Public Health,” has been connected to nearly 50 cooperatives producing safe farming products throughout the country with nearly 1,000 items. The union is currently piloting the safe Vietnamese agricultural product supermarket model in Hanoi before replicating it in big cities, industrial zones and densely populated areas.
For now, the UCA will set up between six and seven supermarkets in Hanoi and will build 50-100 supermarkets in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and other locales next year on the model of centres purchasing and distributing safe Vietnamese farm produce. At the same time, the union will also search for foreign markets to which to export those products.
The agricultural products consumed at these supermarkets are closely monitored from production and harvesting to packaging, preservation and traceability stamping, and are granted certificates of food safety by authorised agencies.
