Cam Lam improves value of agricultural products

In recent years, concentrated and specialized cultivation and husbandry have been clearly built by farmers in Cam Lam district. Enhancing the value of agricultural products and diversifying income sources from agriculture is the goal of the District Farmers' Association to focus on deploying to members and farmers in the coming time.

Cam Lam has long been known as the livestock capital of the province with hundreds of farms, with 1,000 pigs and 10,000 chickens. In addition, this is also a highly specialized mango growing area with more than 5,000 hectares of concentrated mangoes. In recent years, a number of new crops such as Cam Thanh Nam jujubee, Cam Hoa wax potato, etc. have also been planted by farmers in the direction of concentration and specialized cultivation.

According to Pham Hong Thinh - Chairman of the People's Committee of Cam Lam district, over the past time, all levels of the district People's Committee in the area have focused on building many economic models associated with the formation of specialized areas for key crops, concentrated pig and chicken farms in the direction of commodity production and value chain linkage. More and more farmers have a big production mindset, know how to cooperate and link to exploit advantages and potentials to develop production effectively. Typically, the business model of mango orchard combined with hotel business of member Nguyen Son (Cam Hai Tay commune) with a total income of 1.5 billion VND/year; fruit mango business combined with hotel business, transportation services of member Bui Son Hong (Cam Hai Tay commune) with a total income of 1 billion VND/year, creating jobs for 20 people; the model of specializing in cultivating mango and green-skinned pomelo trees with high economic efficiency of member Tran Xuan Hoang (Cam Tan commune) has a total income of 500 million VND/year; duck raising model of member Vo Van Duoc (Cam Hai Dong commune) has a total income of 400 million VND/year...

Visiting mango garden in Cam Lam. Photo: Camlamonline

To raise the scale of production, the district Farmers’Association has focused on mobilizing, guiding and supporting farmers to participate in the development of collective agricultural economic forms. Up to now, the whole district has 17 cooperative groups, 5 cooperatives, 11 branches, 62 professional associations in the fields of cultivation, animal husbandry, aquaculture and services. These association groups operate effectively, increasingly expanding in size, on average, each household in the group has an income of 50 to 200 million VND/year. Collective economy has also helped farmers to access new ways of doing business, develop production scale, contribute to gathering and uniting farmers to help each other reduce poverty, enrich and transform the agricultural economic structure towards concentration, produce goods according to value chains and safe agricultural products. 

In addition, the district Farmers’Association has constantly innovated and improved the effectiveness of consulting, support, service and vocational training activities for farmers to develop production and business. In the past 5 years, the association has coordinated to organize more than 20 demonstration sites of new rice varieties, raising pigs on biological cushions, raising saltwater ducks, raising eels without mud...; coordinated to introduce agricultural products on the electronic trading floor Postmart; trained on selling skills on the electronic floor; organized vocational training for thousands of farmers…

Pham Hong Thinh said that the situation of agricultural and forestry production in the district in recent years has maintained good growth; farmers have begun to focus on solutions to improve the value of agricultural products. In which, cooperatives, cooperative groups, and production households have focused on safe production and processing of agricultural products to offer value-added products like VietGAP Cam Thanh Nam Jujubee Cooperative, dried mango, Cam Lam mango cake, seafood processing…

Besides the achievements, the investment in agricultural production and development is still low compared to the potentials and strengths of the district. The process of economic restructuring and innovation of production methods in agriculture is still slow, the added value of many commodities is still low. This is also a key task at all levels of the People's Committees in the district to focus on improving in the coming period. In addition, the district Farmers’ Association will focus on supporting members and farmers to step by step increase the processing content to improve the value of agricultural products to meet the market's requirements, especially focusing on forming models of ecological agriculture, tourism agriculture, green agriculture... in line with the local development orientation.

In the period of 2018-2023, Cam Lam district has 46,743 turns of farmers producing and doing good business, an increase of 13.6% compared to the previous term. Farmers throughout the district have supported and helped 135 poor farmers with seeds, capital, labor and many other agricultural materials worth billions of dong to help them rise out of poverty.

Hong Dang
Translated by T.T