Building raw material areas for OCOP products

Implementing the “One Commune One Product” (OCOP) Program, in recent times, localities in the province have focused on developing raw material areas associated with high quality agricultural, forestry and fishery products, bearing the characteristics, advantages, and brands of each region, contributing to opening up many opportunities for linkages in building production chains for sustainable development of the agricultural and rural economy.

However, reality shows that the market demand for entities whose products are certified to meet OCOP standards is very large, requiring businesses and cooperatives to have stable raw material areas to ensure product supply and expand production scale to meet the increasing market demand.

With the desire to build grapefruit trees into branded goods to introduce the province’s specialties to consumers nationwide, Xuan Thuy Grapefruit Cooperative, Xuan Thuy commune, Yen Lap district currently has over 30 hectares of raw material areas with Dien grapefruits meeting three-star OCOP standards. Since the cooperative formed a raw material area, it has helped change the production method from small-scale in households to concentrated production in the direction of linking a closed value chain, creating conditions for members to cooperate to improve technical processes and apply advanced quality management programs in production.

In the province, there are currently 396 agricultural cooperatives, 350 farms, 272 cooperative groups and a number of large-scale concentrated agricultural production areas. To date, the whole province has 139 OCOP products of three stars or higher, including 92 three-star products, 47 four-star products, three five-star potential products and one five-star product. The formation of raw material areas will help businesses and cooperatives be proactive in production plans and control raw material sources in terms of time, quantity and quality of products.

To gradually form and develop large-scale, stable concentrated raw material areas, on December 9, 2021, the Provincial People’s Council issued Resolution No. 22/2021/NQ-HDND regulating policies to support and encourage agricultural and rural development in the province, including supporting the formation and development of concentrated, large-scale commodity production areas associated with preservation, processing and consumption of products; accumulate and concentrate land, develop agricultural production; Support key crops and livestock, commodity-oriented production; Encourage the development of typical products with advantages of local production to become goods for trading.

Hoang Huong