<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><a href="http://splashurl.com/mzo44eu"><b><span style="font-family:garamond,serif">THE DIPLOMAT</span></b></a><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">
<h1 class="" itemprop="name"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Vietnam: Back to Organic?</span></h1><div class=""><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span itemprop="description"><p><b>Worried about food safety, Vietnamese look again at small-scale organic farming. </b></p>
</span></span></div><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">By <span itemprop="author">Elisabeth Rosen</span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span itemprop="datePublished">January 02, 2014</span></span></div>
</div></div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">                        </span><div class="" itemprop="articleBody"><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">For
two decades, Thanh was the only fruit vendor on Phan Huy Chu Street, in
the heart of Hanoi�s downtown. But last year, a store opened across the
street advertising �rau an toan� (safe produce). It was an assurance
conspicuously missing from Thanh�s baskets of lychees and mangoes,
displayed millimeters from the sidewalk.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Until recently, no one in Vietnam was talking about food safety. In
the past year, however, it has become front-page news. Rumors about
pesticide-contaminated grapes and rotten pork smuggled across the border
from China made consumers aware that they no longer knew how and where
their food was produced.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">�People are used to buying from the market and not questioning it.
But there�s increasing concern, mostly in urban populations, about where
food comes from,� says Dan Dockery, who runs Highway 4, a restaurant
chain with locations in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Hoi An.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">At Mr Sach, a grocery store that opened in 2010, customers fill
shopping baskets with greens from nearby Ba Vi and avocados from Moc
Chau. Everything is wrapped in transparent plastic, with a label marking
its province of origin.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">�I�m really worried about the quality of the food in Vietnam, so I
try to buy safe food,� says Nguyen Thu Huong, 30, as the cashier rings
up tofu, eggs and knobs of celery. �In the media, they say using
chemicals on plants and animals is very dangerous for our health.�</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Restaurants are also responding to the demand for cleaner food.
Nguyen Ngoc Lan and Nguyen Trung Chung opened Nam 76 last year, where
the couple makes traditional dishes using mushrooms grown on a friend�s
organic farm just outside the city. During lunch hour, Vietnamese office
workers crowd the three branches to eat mushroom hotpot and sticky rice
topped with dried shiitakes.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">�More people in Hanoi have Facebook and Internet. They read a lot of
articles about food imported from other countries with no origin
certification. We�re getting really scared about it,� Lan says.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Last year, she figures, about 10 percent of Hanoians stopped buying
at traditional wet markets � switching instead to the organic and �safe
food� stores that are cropping up in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. A
booklet issued by the Vietnam Standard and Consumer Association lists
122 clean vegetable stores in Hanoi; dozens more, like Mr Sach, have
opened since it was printed.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">�When I moved here six years ago, I didn�t see any organic shops.
Now, there are more and more, � says Stephanie Ralu, who runs 100%, a Ho
Chi Minh City retailer <a href="http://blog.100percentvn.com/tag/hcmc/">offering traceable food products</a> made in Vietnam.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">The primary customers at these new stores are young, educated
Vietnamese women. After speaking to Huong, I meet Tran Hung Van, 31, who
works in an office all week but drives four kilometers every weekend to
buy fruit at Mr Sach. �I have young children. I want to make sure that
the food they eat is safe,� she tells me.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Vietnam�s demand for organic produce comes as a UN report makes the case that the <a href="http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ditcted2012d3_en.pdf">world should be moving away from industrialized agriculture</a>.
Titled �Wake Up Before It�s Too Late,� the report urges countries to
return to the small-scale, organic model that Vietnam practiced for
centuries.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Nearly all farming is still done on a small scale, with most
individual farmers owning less than an acre. But organic hasn�t been the
rule since the 1970s, when the country faced a critical food shortage
and productivity-boosting chemicals offered the chance to fill empty
plates.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">�Vietnam was in a state of hunger, so they needed to address the
issue of food security as well as exports,� explains Eduardo Sabio,
regional representative at VECO Vietnam, an NGO working on sustainable
agriculture. �Rice and vegetables got a lot of subsidies from the
government in terms of fertilizers and pesticides.�</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">The transition to a market economy in the late 1980s increased
dependence on these chemicals. For the first time, farmers were growing
vegetables for profit. Unaware of the consumer backlash that was taking
place in many Western countries, they saw artificial fertilizers as an
easy way to boost output.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">�People wanted to make money fast, so they got lots of chemicals to make crops grow faster,� says Tran Trung Chinh, who started <a href="http://www.mrsach.com.vn">Mr Sach</a>
in 2010. �Everyone used them. But people got a lot of diseases as a
result. Now, after 20 years, everybody knows the chemicals are
dangerous.�</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Governments in Southeast Asia are eagerly ditching traditional
agriculture for large-scale and increasingly globalized production. But
integration into global trade networks comes at a price. Thailand
aggressively�<a href="http://www.developmentprogress.org/sites/developmentprogress.org/files/resource_report/thailand_report_-_master.pdf">industrialized its agriculture system</a> in the 1960s and in the late 1990s was one of the most enthusiastic developing Asian countries to <a href="http://www.unescap.org/tid/publication/aptir2436_zamroni.pdf">plunge into international free trade agreements</a>. Yet few producers reaped the benefits. Today, many Thai farmers suffer <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/06/thailands-other-protests-pro-sustainable-food/57506/">crippling debt</a> � and consumers in Bangkok are <a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/lifestyle/family/386544/the-environment-a-year-in-review">flocking to farmers� markets</a> in search of organic produce.</span></p>
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">As the Trans-Pacific Partnership stirs international controversy for
its intellectual property regulations, it�s worth asking whether such
free trade agreements will also destroy efforts to reform local food
systems by making countries even more dependent on products from
overseas.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">�There will definitely be big implications for agriculture,� Sabio
says. �If Vietnam opens up their doors to imported products, they will
be swamped with certain commodities that are much cheaper to acquire
than produced locally. Most likely, companies will corner most of the
benefits. Farmers will be pressured more and more because the prices of
their commodities will be subjected much more to external pressures.�</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">However, less trade with Trans-Pacific partners would likely mean more trade with China, which remains Vietnam�s <a href="http://atlas.media.mit.edu/country/vnm/">largest trade partner</a>
even as concerns about the safety of Chinese imports grow. Given the
many food safety scandals that have roiled Chinese exports to Vietnam in
the last few years � <a href="http://vietnamnews.vn/opinion/op-ed/239408/food-safety-fears-mount-amid-china-scandal.html">anesthesia-tainted fish</a>, <a href="http://vietnamnews.vn/social-issues/health/236629/imported-sunflower-seeds-to-be-tested-for-dangerous-additives.html">carcinogenic sunflower seeds</a> � Vietnam has reason to be wary of China. Yet many feel the country cannot afford to antagonize its big neighbor.</span></p>
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Can Vietnam forge a successful return to small-scale organic
agriculture? �Mr Sach� thinks so. Owner Chinh doesn�t just sell
products; he also runs educational programs for consumers and training
programs for farmers to convince them of the benefits of organic
practices.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">�It�s my mission to make people understand about organic food,� Chinh
says. �It�s very important if we want to keep Vietnam safe.�</span></p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><i>Elisabeth Rosen is based�in Hanoi, where she is an editor at�</i>Word Vietnam<i>, a national culture and lifestyle magazine. She has previously written for�</i>The Atlantic<i>�and�</i>DestinAsian<i>, among other publications.</i></span></p>
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