Processing agricultural products is considered a key step to increase the value of agricultural products, reduce post-harvest losses and losses, and get rid of the situation of falling prices. However, our country's agricultural product processing industry is still very weak, the equipment renewal coefficient of domestic processing facilities is only 7%/year, equal to 1/2 to 1/3 of other countries.
According to TSKH. Bach Quoc Khang, Scientific Secretary of the New Rural Construction Science and Technology Program, in the past 10 years (2010-2020), our country's agricultural product processing industry (CBNS) has had a clear and rapid development. value-added growth rate is about 5-7%/year.
LOW DEVICE INNOVATION COefficient
Currently, the country has over 7,500 industrial-scale processing enterprises associated with export, with a total capacity of about 120 million tons of raw materials per year. In addition, there are small and medium-sized processing establishments and households. The agricultural product processing industry is increasingly attracting investment resources of the society. Particularly in the past 3 years, there have been 30 industrial-scale agricultural product processing projects started construction with a total investment of about 1 billion USD.
Many industries have formed the basis of the processing industry, such as vegetables and fruits with over 150 establishments with a total design capacity of over 1 million tons of products/year. For rice, over 60% of production is processed at nearly 600 industrial milling facilities. Almost all sugarcane output (about 21 million tons, excluding small amounts of food cane and sugarcane processed in manual molasses furnaces) is processed at more than 40 industrial sugar factories, producing more than 1 5 million tons of sugar.
The coffee sector has 239 industrial processing enterprises, annually purchasing most of the output of about 2 million tons/year of the entire nearly 700 thousand hectares of coffee. The seafood sector has 636 processing facilities, handling most of the annual seafood output of over 8 million tons, producing over 3 million tons of processed products. The wood processing industry has 4,500 industrial establishments, each year consuming 40 million m3 of wood...
However, according to Mr. Bach Quoc Khang, the capacity to process agricultural products on an industrial scale is still low. In the fruit and vegetable and meat industries, the volume put into processing accounts for only 5-10% of annual output. The scale of investment in processing is also unreasonable and unbalanced with the development of raw materials. Some places are too hasty to invest in large-scale industrial processing, while there is no or slow to form concentrated raw material production areas, causing many businesses to lose money.
For areas where materials are dispersed, it is often difficult to attract investment in industrial processing, but they have not paid enough attention to the development of small and medium-scale processing, leaving them to be spontaneous with outdated technology and difficult products. consume. Although the total capacity of processing plants is large, the processing level is low, mainly milling, polishing, cleaning, sorting (rice is still rice), not significantly increased. added value. Some agricultural products are highly seasonal, difficult to preserve, and need effective support from processing to both preserve consumption and create high added value (such as fresh vegetables and fruits), but the processing technology is expensive. reticent, slow.
The equipment renewal coefficient of domestic processing facilities is only 7%/year, equal to 1/2 to 1/3 of other countries. Many processing facilities are over 15 years old, but the technology is still not renewed, and production costs are high.
TARGET TO BE IN THE TOP 10 IN THE WORLD
In Directive 25/CT-TTg dated June 4, 2020 on a number of tasks and solutions to develop agro-forestry-fishery processing, the Prime Minister has set a target that by 2030, Vietnam must "stand among the Top 10 countries in the world" is the logistics deep processing center of the global agricultural trade.
According to many experts, it is necessary to change the approach to investment in the processing industry to suit the development conditions in the period 2020-2030: to further increase the investment attraction in the processing industry by institutions, more progressive and synchronous policies. It is necessary to have a national science and technology program, focusing on national experts to research and upgrade technology for processing and preserving agricultural products.
Along with that, the manufacturing industry must be strongly developed to be able to support the production and processing of agricultural products. It is necessary to focus on the key equipment groups of the processing and refining technology lines (energy supply, preservation, drying, sorting, pasteurization, packaging, automatic control...). Last weekend, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan had a meeting with the Institute of Agricultural Electrical Engineering and Post-Harvest Technology (VIAEP).
Report to Vice Minister, Director of VIAEP, Assoc.Prof.Dr. Pham Anh Tuan said that in addition to researching machinery for mechanization in animal husbandry and farming, over the years, VIAEP has also achieved many results in research for processing and preserving agro-forestry-fishery products. Typically, the system of equipment for processing plant seeds (rice, corn, beans) of high quality with a scale of 1-1.5 tons/h. Various types of cold storage, freezing storage, insulation storage of different sizes (capacity from 10 - 200m3) to preserve agricultural products and seafood, made entirely in the country, automatically adjust the temperature and humidity in the room. warehouse.
Model of preliminary processing and preservation of fresh vegetables, flowers and fruits (Packing house) with a focus on productivity: 10-15 tons/day. The technology of "coating" to preserve oranges has been applied to localities: Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang, Hoa Binh, Nghe An with a scale of over 500 tons. Preservative preparations (applied to preserve lychee, oranges, and pomelos on a large scale in Hai Duong, Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, Ha Giang, Hung Yen and Phu Tho provinces). Technological process for production and application of AR3 and TH4 ethylene-adsorbent preparations (10 mg/kg) in preserving fresh fruits and vegetables, increasing the preservation efficiency by 20-40% compared to the control, reducing the percentage loss rate from 20-25% to less than 10%.
Successfully researched the technological process of production and application of 3 types of bio-composite films (2 types for citrus fruits and 1 type for tomatoes and cucumbers). The cost of inoculants is only 60-70% of the cost of imported inoculants. The Institute also successfully researched the technological process of producing probiotics against Candida sake, Rhodotorula minuta (108-109CFU/g), and Pseudomonas siringae antagonistic bacteria preparations (108-109CFU/g) to preserve fruit and vegetable management. Results after 30-40 days, the spoilage rate is less than 5%, meeting the requirements of food safety.
The technology of preserving fresh lychees is also a proud achievement, using modulated gas packaging (MAP) technology and cold preservation technology in combination with ethylene R3 absorbent to preserve fresh litchi on a large scale. 30-50 tons/warehouse, storage time from 28-30 days, loss rate less than 7%. This technology has been transferred to specialized fruit and vegetable households in Bac Giang and Hung Yen lychee areas.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan shared: "I have visited many models of agricultural product processing in Korea and Japan. I see that they are not only agricultural production but also doing business. Vietnam's agriculture needs to focus on that mindset in order to control the law of goods, supply and demand, and to transform from a technical industry to an economic sector, in which, VIAEP must play the most important role. In this transition, especially creating added value for agricultural products from processing and preservation stages, VIAEP needs to be creative and focus more on post-harvest technology, not just the base. In particular, scientific thinking needs to be associated with economic thinking".
Mr. Le Minh Hoan said that the current situation is that Vietnamese farmers are thinking of selling once and for all, do not want to classify to take advantage of the classification of agricultural products. Therefore, the research and production of a machine that can classify agricultural products will have a lot of potential. If successful, the cooperatives can organize the purchase and assign to a separate operating group, serving all cooperative members.
According to Chu Khoi
VnEconomy
