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Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Phung Duc Tien is addressing the working session

The livestock industry is gradually recovering

According to Mr. Huynh Thanh Vinh, Director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, African swine fever has caused great damage to the province’s livestock industry, brought the total number of pigs down by 19.41% compared to the period before the epidemic. Due to African swine fever, Dong Nai province has had to cull around 450,000 pigs with a weight of nearly 24,000 tons, and simultaneously spent about VND668 billion timely supporting the households whose pigs were culled to help farmers get some loans for their reinvestment in production activities.

In late March, 2019, Dong Nai announced that African swine fever had ended. Right after the epidemic was controlled Dong Nai paid a special attention to increasing pig herds. Accordingly, the province is determined enough to keep the pig herds in the farm’s system, pig breeds and support mechanisms to keep pigs free from diseases and maintain grandparents pig herds for breeding.

Thanks to the implementation of a lot of synchronous solutions, the livestock industry is gradually recovering. At present, the province’s total number of pigs is about more than VND2.1 million (attaining 85% compared to the period before the epidemic). Particularly, there are 815 grandparent breeding pigs, 215,000 breeding sows, 64,517 sows for backup, 3,700 hogs and 1,375,213 pigs for meat. Farm livestock accounts for more than 90%, small and scattered livestock activities occupy nearly 10% of the total number of pigs with about 6,150 households. Currently, 10 out of 11 localities have implemented their plans to increase pig herds (except for Bien Hoa city because it is in the process of relocating livestock facilities out of the city) with 328 facilities that have increased their pig herds, reaching the number of 219,845 heads.

With the speed of increasing pig herds happening as rapidly as nowadays, it is expected that by the end of 2020 the total number of pigs in the province will reach more than 2.5 million heads”, said Mr. Vinh.

Especially, increasing pig herds needs to pay a special attention to biosafety livestock activities

At the recent working session with the delegation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Vo Van Chanh said, Dong Nai determined that increasing pig herds is an urgent task but say no to increasing pig herds at all prices. It is necessary to increase pig herds on farms that ensure biosafey measures, resolutely say no to increasing pig herds at all prices and in residential areas, ensure disease safety, and encourage increasing pig herds on large farms.

“The most difficult problem in Dong Nai province today is how to find breeds for increasing herds due to the fact that breeding sources are very scarce and are mainly from businesses, which leads to high prices (from VND2.5 to 3 million/animal). Therefore, Dong Nai province requested the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to direct enterprises to provide breeds for localities so that they can focus on increasing their pig herds” said Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Vo Van Chanh.

Through the actual inspection of the   livestock activities in some localities in the province, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Phung Duc Tien highly appreciated the achievements that Dong Nai has obtained in controlling the epidemic area and increase pig herds quickly and successfully.

However, Deputy Minister noted increasing pig herds in the coming time needs to ensure biosafety and encourage the implementation of large-scale breeding facilities, especially pig breeding enterprises. Local authorities are supposed to work with banks to provide preferential loans for farmers. Also, large-scale livestock enterprises in Dong Nai are supposed to be responsible for reducing pork prices at the government’s request.

“Dong Nai is the locality with the largest number of pig herds in the country. If increasing pig herds is done well after the epidemic, it will contribute significantly to stabilizing pork prices on the market, thereby developing the province’s livestock industry in a stable and sustainable manner”, affirmed Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Phung Duc Tien.

Duy Minh (Le Khoi)