Improving the competitiveness of pig producers in an adjusting Vietnam market
This project seeks to identify an appropriate policy and technology framework and forms of market and institution coordination that will allow smallholder pig producers in Vietnam to competitively raise their incomes through better access to higher value market chains.
Demand for pork is increasing rapidly in Vietnam due to growth in incomes and urban populations. Pork consumers are also demanding better product quality. A dual market structure is emerging, involving a few large-scale farms using higher yielding technology packages and a large number of smallholders using less sophisticated systems.Given widespread rural poverty in Vietnam, successful commercial smallholder pig farming alongside the large-scale pig industry may serve as a vehicle for poverty alleviation if pragmatic options can be identified about the technology, institutional arrangements and policy support needed to improve the access of poorer producers to quality inputs and services.
Various formal and informal market arrangements involving input suppliers, marketing and processing firms and pig raisers are evolving. However, it is still unclear which institutional framework is best suited to increase smallholder access to high-value market chains.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
- Establish empirically the level of market demand for commercial and traditional quality attributes of pork in Vietnam, characterize these attributes and validate any associated significant price differentials and their determinants.
- Compare input and output marketing arrangements between smallholder pig-raisers selling into high- and low-priced markets.
- Characterize the structure and conduct of the input- and service-providing firms and pig markets.
- Compare the geographical distribution of and access to inputs and services by different types of pig producers.
- Identify smallholder constraints to entry into higher value market chains.
- Assess the potential impact of selected institutional, technology and policy options for increasing the access of smallholder pig producers to improved inputs and services, and high-value supply chains.
- Promote awareness and uptake of the pro-poor policy, institutional and investment options emerging from the project among stakeholders, decision makers, investors and market actors in the pig industry in Vietnam.
ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES
- Evidence of the extent of demand for pork with better traditional quality attributes.
- Mapped locations of higher-and lower-priced pig value chains and market actors.
- Knowledge about the characteristics of pig producers selling in higher- and lower-priced markets.
- Knowledge about contractual arrangements and marketing systems for inputs and products, and the relative market power of input and service providers.
- Knowledge about the potential impact of policy interventions to improve smallholder market access.
- A strategy for pilot testing of a set of recommended options by development and/or private-sector partners in Vietnam.
For more information, please contact Lucy Lapar or visit the project website.
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