Vietnamese go abroad to breed cows, grow rice
As it is difficult to expand production scale due to the limited land fund in Vietnam, local investors are going abroad to develop their agricultural businesses.
ABC News reported that a Vietnamese businessman has spent US$18 million to buy a farm with 10,000 cattle in the northern part of Australia. The buyer was Pham Nhat Vu, chair of An Vien Group, a media company.
Vu is the brother of Vietnam's first dollar billionaire recognized by Forbes Pham Nhat Vuong, who is the president of Vingroup. This is the first Vietnamese invested project in animal husbandry in Australia.
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T.L, director of a livestock company in Dong Nai province, said he as planning to farm cows in Australia to provide to the Vietnamese market.
“It is very difficult in Vietnam to get a land plot of 100 hectares to organize agricultural production. There are many cattle farms in Australia which cover thousands of hectares each,” he explained.
The weather in Australia is favorable for cattle breeding, and farms are large. Only one farmer is needed to take care of 1,000 cows, so the production cost is low.
“Even if I don’t bring cows to Vietnam for consumption, I won’t have to be worried about the sale, because this will be undertaken by the government,” he said.
According to the businessman, except the higher personal income tax, foreign investors are treated like local citizens. Regarding profit, he believes that he would ‘live well’ if he invests US$5 million.
Local newspapers have recently reported that some Vietnamese businessmen bought farms in Canada for pig breeders to export to Vietnam.
K, the owner of a pig farm in Canada, said the country does not allow new pig farms, therefore, foreigners can only take over existing farms through stake transfer deals.
He said his farm provides meat to the domestic market, and he hopes he can bring pig breeders to Vietnam by mid-2017.
Vietnam is a big rice producer and exporter, but Vietnamese also like Cambodian and Lao rice. This has prompted some businesses to grow rice in Cambodia and Laos to export to Vietnam.
Loc Troi Group, for example, began developing a 107 hectare rice area in Kampong Speu in Cambodia in 2014, growing rice with no chemical fertilizer.
By 2015, the area had been expanded to 340 hectares which provided jobs to 240 households.
Nguyen Van Ngai, Economics Dean of the Ho Chi Minh City Agriculture and Forestry University, said that Vietnamese investors, with experience in rice growing, can easily succeed in other countries.
