Coconut is one of Bến Tre’s key agricultural products. The province plans to promote all its key agricultural products on e-commerce platforms. VNA/VNS Photo Huỳnh Phúc Hậu

HCM CITY — The Cửu Long (Mekong) Delta province of Bến Tre has plans to promote all its key agricultural products on e-commerce platforms such as Postmart.vn, Voso.vn, Sendo, and bentretrade.vn.

Speaking at a recent meeting, Nguyễn Minh Cảnh, vice chairman of the Bến Tre Province People’s Committee, said the province would help farmers sell their goods online, especially connecting them with e-commerce platforms.

It is important to raise farmers’ awareness of the role played by e-commerce platforms as distribution channels amid the pandemic.

Through e-commerce platforms, farmers would receive useful information about farm markets, demand and supply forecasts, weather, and seed and fertiliser supply, Cảnh said.

The province plans to organise 20 training courses for farming households, agricultural production co-operatives, farmers associations, and enterprises on how to sell on e-commerce platforms.

It will create programmes to connect suppliers and customers and help farmers participate in online fairs instead of direct sales.

The volume of farm produce sold on e-commerce platforms remains modest. 

As of August some 8,000 farming households with around 14,500 agricultural products were connected to e-commerce platforms, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The aim is to connect five million farming households across the country to e-commerce platforms by the end of 2021.

Farm produce value chain

According to the province Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, it is building a value chain for key agricultural products, especially competitive ones such as pomelo, coconut, rambutan, longan, ornamental plants, and pigs, cows and shrimps.

Đoàn Văn Danh, its director, said his agency wanted to promote the processing industry, attract investment in high-tech processing clusters in specialised farming areas and develop logistics services to serve key agricultural items.

The province had established a coconut products chain spread over 12,036 hectares, or 16.5 per cent of its total coconut growing area, and a green-skin pomelo products chain on 330 hectares, he said.

It would speed up establishment of value chains for other key agricultural products such as pigs, cows and marine shrimp, he added.

Bến Tre has set a goal of having at least four agricultural value chains worth US$1 billion each by 2030. — VNS