Challenges for the Development of Safe Vegetables in Vietnam: An Insight into the Supply Chains in Hanoi City

Abstract

The development of vegetable sector plays an important role in improving living standards of farmers as well as more contribution to the export of Vietnam agriculture industry. However, the unsafety of vegetables has still received much concern from public and Vietnamese government. The achievement of the program "safe vegetable" (indicating vegetables certified as safely under the state regulations) has been very limited in spite of great efforts from the government over the past 20 years since 1998. This issue motivates us to examine the challenges of safe vegetable sector based on a comprehensive approach from the supply chains. In addition to literature review, a rich volume of our primary data was collected from in-depth interviews of all stakeholders (farmers, managers of cooperatives, local collectors, distributors, and local government) in supply chains of safe vegetables and performed semi-structured questionnaires toward consumers in Hanoi city in March 2018 and March 2019. Our findings indicated a considerable increase in market share of safe vegetables distributed through modern retailing system compared to that in previous studies, which were carried out around ten years ago. However, 80% of safe vegetables were still distributed to traditional markets at no premium price compared to conventional/uncertified counterparts. One main reason came from low level of consumer trust. Besides, weak relationship among stakeholders in safe vegetable supply chains by the lack of mutual trust, transparent information providing and interest sharing was also a big obstacle. Another reason was that the state management in vegetable safety focused much on safe vegetable production areas, whereas lack of food safety control in distribution and business process can hamper the development of safe vegetable market share. Finally we proposed main policy recommendations for developing the safe vegetable segmentation in Vietnam.