Following the framework of JICA Project for Strengthening Safe Crop Value Chains in Northern Vietnam (hereafter: Safe Crop Project), on May 17th Bac Ninh Provincial Project Management Unit (PPMU) organized a market survey training for 3 local cooperatives with DABACO supermarket and Hien master clean vegetable store.
Japanese experts from JICA Safe crop project – Mr. Kayano and Mr. Nanakubo joined the survey to understand current market condition and oversee the training process. Ms. Thuy from the vegetable procument team of Bac Ninh DABACO supermarket shared helpful information about their purchasing requirements and process.
According to Ms. Thuy, Bac Ninh DABACO Supermarket prefers to source vegetables locally. However, they have not been able to find any suitable vegetables supplier in Bac Ninh due to a variety of reasons such as unstable supply, lack of VietGap certificate or VAT invoice. To overcome these shortcomings, experts from JICA Safe Crop project and Bac Ninh PPMU guided local cooperatives to learn more about the purchasing repuirements of DABACO supermarkets, such as preferred size, variety, packaging, and payment process.
Participants from 3 local cooperatives all take turns to advertise their products (such as grapes from Liem Anh cooperative and sponge, cabbage, and tomato from the orthers two) to DABACO supermarkets and collect feedback for a better production plan in the future.
Representatives from DABACO supermarkets shared that they are buying, on average, 1-200kg of cabbage, 120kg of tomato per day so there is potential for future cooperation with local cooperatives. DABACO produces some of the vegetables such as sponge by themselves, however, they still look for other producers with different haverst time as supplement source.
At Hien master clean vegetables, farmers from 3 local cooperatives learn more about the ideal haversting and delivering procedure. Ms. Thu, the dedicated owners of the store, shared that they are often havest vegeatables from 3am and deliver to the market before 7am. All of her vegetables are pre-processed (removed the unedible parts and cleaned). Similar to DABACO supermarkets, Hien master clean vegetable store required random QA testing from supplier, at least once every six months. Thus, Ms. Thu suggested cooperatives to include Vietgap certificate, QA testing result, farming diary and image evidence of ‘safe’ cultivation in the cooperatives’ curriculumn vitae.