Mountain OCOP products: The picture is not all rosy

Over the past five years, many OCOP products in mountainous districts have been born, making their names on the province’s colorful OCOP map. But behind those diverse packaging and products, there is a persistent story, and the smooth answer is not easy.

Diversified OCOP products of Ha Vy Facility in Tra Mai - Nam Tra My. Photo: TV

There are many difficulties

Ms. Luong Nguyen Ha - Ha Vy Production & Business Establishment, Tra Mai Commune (Nam Tra My) said that, like many other individuals and units in the mountainous areas with OCOP products, her establishment also faces many difficulties.

Firstly, the raw material area is unstable, the cost is high when people's production habits are unscientific , the land area is not fully utilized, and it is still fragmented...

Second, regarding the production process to harvesting, due to complex terrain and inconvenient transportation, the quality of input materials is also affected. Third, processing technology has not been invested in synchronously, there is a lack of preliminary processing machinery, and manual preliminary processing methods must be used.

Another facility that is quite famous in Nam Tra My with 3-star products is Tuan Quyen Production Facility, with dried banana products. Mr. Nguyen Hoang Anh Tuan (owner of the facility) said: “The input is… the biggest headache, when the bananas that people sell are not of the same quality. The biomass bananas here are wormy, have a lot of seeds, and the bananas are not juicy, have little sugar, and are not uniform, forcing us to choose carefully, for example, out of 100 bunches, we can only choose 20 bunches.

The reason is the farming habits of the people, they plant without taking care, after one season they abandon. The output is very large, if there is a good raw material area, this product will definitely develop strongly. We also do not have a large capital to invest in technology, machinery, to operate effectively, with little waste, it would take up to hundreds of millions…”.

Difficulty in raw material areas is a difficult problem. Mr. Le Trung Thuc - Chairman of Tra Don Commune People's Committee said that it is not easy for enterprises to have large areas when people are afraid of losing land. The land is fragmented, difficult to concentrate. With the habit of arbitrary cultivation and refusal to apply techniques, where can we get quality products?

Long distance problem

To develop and go further with a product is not an easy story, because there are products that, once labeled, are weak and have difficulty competing. According to Ms. Luong Nguyen Ha, it is necessary to have a traditional trade promotion process such as: through trade fairs, through gift product channels of local agencies, organizations and businesses to promote and introduce, which will increase customer trust, customers will also understand the product better and through word of mouth will expand the customer network.

Mr. Trinh Minh Hai - Head of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Nam Tra My district said that currently, the district's products are still basically operating, however, some activities are at a standstill, and trading efficiency is still small.

The current difficulty is that every locality in the country has its own local products, sometimes the products have overlapping raw materials, so we need to support more sustainable output, but struggling in one locality is very difficult.

Over the past five years, the province's policy mechanism for OCOP product creation programs has been very large, but it is still spread out and lacks depth, so many businesses are supported at the same time but with low capital, small businesses also receive support like large businesses, still chasing after the number of products/locality, so many products are not of high quality and not sustainable.

Many owners of production facilities in mountainous districts said that the application of OCOP classification assessment criteria in terms of procedures is quite complicated in terms of documents, but the team guiding businesses and people to implement is limited, and there is no specialized consulting team, leading to the registration documents to participate in OCOP classification assessment having to be revised many times, costing money...

A question… far-fetched but unavoidable: when will the unique mountainous products of Quang Nam be available on the world market?

Mr. Tran Van Man, Vice Chairman of Nam Tra My District People's Committee, said that this is not simple, because the raw material area is difficult to concentrate. Going out to the world , there must be a planting area code, the answer must be where to plant, when the natural forest is like that? Where is the origin of the nursery? Without a planting area code, how can there be a legitimate nursery? Where is the parent tree? Only when the mother is officially a nursery can there be a child tree? Then QR-Code, it is not easy. Those four problems are fundamental, meaning that if the infrastructure cannot be solved, then no matter what is done, it will fail. Even Ngoc Linh ginseng is now officially sold abroad?

Some people say that we are too eager to mass produce! Let's choose a few typical products, invest heavily, seriously, complete all the processes on site, then vigorously promote and advertise, then we will reach out to the world. That is also international experience, many countries have done it successfully.

OCOP products are not finished when they are born, if after 3 years they are not up to standard, or they die because they run out of steam. They are made to sell, compete to develop, stimulate production, increase income, create sustainable stability in production and life, no one wants to produce, consume and… be happy. This picture still has many dark colors, it cannot be painted by businesses or the State alone.

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