Local agriculture and seafood industries struggle Despite exports for the agriculture, forestry and aquatics sector having struggled during 2015, their annual total should still should be close to the target of US$30 billion set by the National Assembly, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). At a recent conference in Hanoi, a representative of MARD disclosed that collective total overseas shipments for the eleven months leading up to December dipped 2.8% year-on-year to US$27.41 billion. On the downside, exports of agricultural commodities fell 4% to US$12.74 billion while fish and seafood overseas consignments dropped precipitously by 16.4% to US$6.01 billion, the MARD representative said. Meanwhile, forestry shipments for the eleven-month period January-November jumped 8.2% to US$6.4 billion. Commodity exports witnessed an across the board decline led by the nation’s key exports of rice, coffee, fish and seafood. Rice posted a 3.6% increase in volume to 6.24 million metric tons and a 4.9% drop in value to US$2.65 billion while coffee fell 27.7% in volume to 1.13 million metric tons and 30.2% in value to US$3.3 billion. Meanwhile, a year-on-year uptick was recorded in the relatively less important foreign shipments of peppers, cashew nuts, cassava and cassava-based commodities, with revenue increases ranging 2.9 to 19%. The most significant drops in fish and seafood exports were to the US of over 25%, Japan of 13%, and the Republic of Korea of 14%. Notably, the US market has been a tough market for all fish and seafood exporting nations in the Asian region, said the rep. In August, USFDA inspectors set a monthly record by refusing 72 shipments of shrimp, much of it from Malaysia, that either tested positive for antibiotics or lacked evidence of being drug free. Most of the shrimp was turned away from the agency's Southwest Import District, which includes Texas ports. Through October, the FDA had refused 377 separate shrimp entries – from large containers to small packages – citing antibiotics or veterinary drug residues. In all of 2014, the agency turned away 208 shrimp shipments due to illegal drug residues, and that was nearly four times the refusals of a year before. So it isn’t just Vietnamese shrimp that is being turned out of the US market, as the upturn in refusals demonstrates that the agency is getting more vigilant at the borders and refusing more and more shipments from all of Asia. In the near future, the MARD representative said the ministry planned to take remedial action in the name of responsible aquaculture to better implement VietGap and ASC certification to reduce the negative impact of fish and seafood farming on the nation’s economy. Additionally, it is taking steps to boost marketing and advertising efforts in foreign markets, said the representative specifically citing attempts to sell dragon fruits in the Japanese market and chicken in Russia. He said the ministry would also prop up production levels to bolster quality and competitive advantages for products of Vietnam such as rice, coffee, rubber, and fish, in addition to peppers and cashews. VOV