Vietnam Will Have to Continue Importing Maize

In 2005, the area of maize in Vietnam was 1.052 million hectares which increased by 100,000 hectares only in 2016. It is projected that in the coming years, the area might be reduced to less than 1 million hectares which will increase Vietnam's dependency on imported products.

According to the report of the Department of Crop Production, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) on maize production and orientation of development in 2016, the area of maize cultivation in the country is 1.152 million hectares and will be increased slightly in the coming years. However, after 2025, the country's maize area is projected to be between 950,000 and 1.1 million hectares. Despite this, MARD aims to increase maize productivity. Specifically, after 2025, the average yield will reach 5.2-5.3 tons/hectare, the highest productivity is 5.8 million tons. The average productivity of the whole country in 2016 was 4.55 tons/hectare and the total output was 5.244 million tons.Thus, overall output of domestic maize production in the coming years only increased by more than 550,000 tons. This means that Vietnam is still reliant on imported maize and needs to import 7-8 million tons per year. 

MARD's statistics show that in 2016, Vietnam imported 8.3 million tons of maize, the highest ever to meet the internal demand for feed. Since 2015, Vietnam has become the largest maize importer in the world. Every year, Vietnam needs about 20,000 tons of maize seed, including open pollinated and imported varieties supplied by 50 different companies. In addition to hybrid varieties, Vietnam also cultivated genetically modified maize with an area of about 100,000 hectares.

With 1.152 million hectares, Vietnam ranked 24th out of 166 maize cultivating countries in the world, but in terms of maize yields, the country just ranked 59th. 

Read the original article in Vietnamese from The Saigon Times.