Development of Organic Agriculture in the Mekong Delta – Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

The model of organic rice production in the Mekong Delta, which started from 2015 until now (2020), has had good results. Organic agriculture still faces many difficulties and challenges at the beginning but many of them have been solved out. First of all, that is the success of organic rice production in the shrimp-rice area with the potential of hundreds of thousands of hectares. Then, the replication of organic rice production in the intensive practice areas and the replication of organic production for other crops have high economic value. The SWOT research and analysis showed that the development of organic agriculture still has many weaknesses and threats compared to strengths and opportunities. The biggest weaknesses and threats are the difficulties in changing social awareness and in changing farming practices of farmers. Farmers who are accustomed to traditional production which highly application of chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides, it is not easy work to change their traditional practices to organic practices. At the same time, there are some cases that farmers are dishonest, they do not follow the process or arbitrarily apply forbidden chemical inputs leading to failure of the model which affects the whole project and harms the invested businesses. The next challenge is weed management in organic rice production, especially in intensive rice cultivation areas in which paddy grows 2-3 crops for a year. That is because in organic production no chemical herbicides are allowed. Weaknesses and threats lead to many risks, making businesses and stakeholders afraid to invest in organic production. For strengths and opportunities, the Vietnam government has made new policies to encourage the development of organic agriculture for the Mekong Delta and the whole country. Besides that, due to the demand for organic products, organic product consumption becomes a hot trend in the world and the country now a day, opening up a great opportunity for the production and trading of organic products. To overcome weaknesses and threats to take advantage of opportunities for organic agriculture, the authors have proposed recommendations to create solutions for organic agriculture in Mekong Delta to develop.