Mr. Nguyen Thai Hoc, General Director of Dong Nai Agricultural Products and Foods Import, Export & Processing Company (Donafoods), said that the company has officially worked with Target Ltd. (Germany) with head office in Thailand to cooperate in building a clean cashew raw material area in Dong Nai.
According to Hoc, before that, Target Ltd. had surveyed and evaluated the cashew processing factories of Donafoods and said that the factories all met the requirements of food hygiene and safety in processing organic cashew.
As planned, in September 2014, Target Ltd., together with Donafoods will visit the planned cashew area in Xuan Loc and Dinh Quan districts and will work directly with cashew farmers in these two districts.
The company will meet and advise farmers to grow cashews by organic methods; survey cashew fields and encourage farmers not to use herbicides; take samples of soil, leaves and stems of representative cashew trees for testing.
The price of organic cashew kernels is currently much higher than the conventional ones and consumed well in the world market.
Mr. Hoc also said that in Dong Nai, cashew trees currently have a great advantage because processing enterprises have the ability to consume the output. Moreover, the cashew nut consumption market of the province has expanded and stabilized which includes main export markets as the US, China, Canada, Russia, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, and Thailand.
In the first 07 months of 2014, the province’s cashew exports were estimated at 15,200 tons, equivalent to about 98.6 million USD, increased by 22.5% in volume & 30.6% in value over the same period.
In order to develop and create a stable raw material area for the cashew nut processing industry, the Provincial People’s Committee has approved the project of developing the cashew material area of Donafoods.
The goal of the project is to reorganize production, support farmers to invest and cultivate so that in 2015, Donafoods has an area of 9,500ha high-quality raw materials, in three districts of Xuan Loc, Dinh Quan and Trang Bom.
However, according to Mr. Hoc, although the project has been approved for almost a year, in reality the implementation has faced many difficulties due to lack of capital. The access to incentive capital of farmers in the project area is not easy.
On the other hand, the yield of cashew is quite low, for example in Dinh Quan district, the average yield is only 8 quintals/ha. Therefore, many farmers cut cashews to grow other crops of higher economic value. Therefore, the cooperation with Target Ltd. to build a clean cashew material area in Dong Nai will regain advantages for cashew farmers.
