Digitization of livestock industry data is needed to increase predictability

Newspaper Vietnamese culture Discuss with Dr. Tran Cong Thang, Director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD) on this issue.

From the story of expensive pork, while poultry and seafood are cheap, according to him, do we need to have surveys, studies, and an overall assessment of food supply and demand of each item?

Accurate information is always an important basis for policymakers to make the right decisions.

Therefore, it is not only now that we need detailed assessments of supply and demand, but we often have to have accurate monitoring and monitoring information systems to help managers understand the situation. , predict the trend.

I think that it is not just one or two commodities but we need to build a detailed scenario for many other major agricultural products. Gladly, the Livestock Law has also required the farms to declare specific information and hope this is taken seriously because it is written in the law.

It is necessary to build regularized digital data for the livestock sector to increase predictability. Photo: Nguyen Huan.

Particularly for the pork industry today, in the meantime if we have a good evaluation study of production, re-ability, research needs to see how resilience, supply and demand gap how ? Since then, calculating the replacement capacity (through the cross-elasticity coefficient) between pork, chicken and aquatic products will give us the overall picture today.

After we have the overall picture, we will have data, data to build scenarios, will see the possibility of supply shortages (or imbalances in the short term) and propose specific solutions, such as promoting re-herd, increasing imports, promoting the replacement through poultry, seafood and calculating if you want the price of live hogs to 60,000 VND / kg or 70,000 VND / kg to add how many heads pig.

We are advocating a change in meal structure, livestock structure towards reducing pigs, increasing poultry, fishery and large cattle, but increasing and decreasing as much as possible, what is the proportional structure is reasonable, according to him, do we have any specific calculations or studies?

Currently, research or data on meal structure The General Statistics Office has data on the survey of living standards of Vietnam, including a quite detailed survey of consumption situation.

I personally find the spending part of the survey to be quite high, especially for home consumption. Based on this, we can also clearly see the consumption structure of households, rural areas, urban areas, and different groups of households.

In addition, based on data on domestic production, the situation of import and export, we can also estimate the consumption structure. Data from these two sources are also quite similar.

In terms of domestic supply structure, there has been a transition between groups. For pork, it accounts for 70%, down from 2005 at 81%. In contrast, poultry in 2005 only about 11% now is 21%. So, with the previous orientation of reducing pork and poultry increase, we have done a little.

In terms of how much the research is going up and down, I have not done any formal research but only a few studies on consumer trends. However, in my opinion, this research is not easy, because actually everything changes regularly according to supply and demand, price.

Research is more important if we can make good supply and demand forecasts to warn producers or we have good studies, good scenarios to predict situations to help managers. Reason for the right decisions. In my opinion, we need research to build a good information system, but it must be frequent, not when it is time to study.

Want to run the market economy in a timely manner must have accurate data, but it seems that our livestock statistics have not really met the volatility of the market economy, right?

Doing research for the past 15 years, I find that our agricultural information system is getting better and better. A lot of information of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the General Department of Statistics has become more and more abundant.

Regarding import and export, the system of customs data is also very complete. Current production and export figures for the livestock and aquaculture sectors are available. The situation of international trade in data is also getting richer.

In addition to the pork, poultry and seafood industries, it is also necessary to have updated digital figures and regular forecasts. Photo: Nguyen Huan.

However, I find that there are some difficulties in finding and accessing information sources that need to be addressed.

It is information about the situation of the supply without reporting and monitoring so it is difficult for us to know at present how many households are, how much is the enterprise, and how much is the reserve in the population. Reserve systems in businesses are very important and not easily accessible. Another difficulty is that we have too many small scale households and cannot follow them all.

Secondly, the demand information system is mainly generalized, but has not had a full assessment of categories and commodity groups. In my opinion, we estimate but need regular reports, adequate research will be better and more realistic observations.

In particular, our forecasting information system is currently very weak, this is the most difficult part of market forecasting. To make good forecasts we need accurate information from supply and demand, then we must see the factors that can change supply and demand in the future.

Besides, the current information system on Customs is quite complete and very good if it is updated promptly and publicly, but the current reality for full access is not easy. In addition, the price information system has begun to be built, but it is still fragmented, not regular and complete.

Sincerely thank you!

According to Vietnam Agriculture