By Avigayil Kadesh
Israeli Agriculture Minister Yair Shamir came home from an October 2013 official visit to Vietnam with verbal agreements to establish a joint Israeli-Vietnamese agriculture research and development fund, as well as a free-trade agreement between the two countries.
It was the third time that an Israeli minister of agriculture has visited Vietnam since 2007, and marked 20 years of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Southeast Asian country, which has a population of some 91 million.
The Agriculture Ministry’s Deputy Director-General for Foreign Trade and International Relations, Itzik Ben-David, accompanied Shamir, along with an Israeli agricultural business delegation led by Israel Export Institute CEO Ofer Sachs.
“There are many commonalities between our peoples in their modern history,” says Ben-David, “including a struggle for independence and economic development. In Vietnam, agriculture is a very important economic sector because 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas, drawing income from farming.”
Shamir’s suggestion of establishing a joint agriculture R&D fund was met with enthusiasm by Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang and Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat, reports Ben-David.
Plans were quickly made for Vietnamese researchers to fly to Israel for an in-depth look at agricultural research going on at public and private institutions such as the Volcani Agricultural Research Organization , the Hebrew University’s agriculture school and the Technion-Institute of Technology.
“This will serve as a good basis to identify areas of cooperation for the joint research fund,” Ben-David says.
“We also suggested exploring cooperation in aquaculture and other fishery-related topics, which may be the best solution for coping with food security issues. Many more of our companies could be involved there.”
Free trade
Shamir and Sang also agreed to push for negotiating a free-trade agreement between the two nations by the end of 2014. Israel has similar agreements in place with the governments of Italy, Germany, China and Japan.
Hundreds of Israeli companies do business with Vietnam, and trade between the countries is steadily increasing. Israeli exports to Vietnam last year jumped by 120% to $747 million.
Ben-David notes that free trade would help further both countries’ economic relations in agricultural technology, science and defense.
“We learned during our visit that the Vietnamese are eager to develop agriculture and are allocating a lot of resources toward this, but they charge a 15% custom tax on imported agricultural devices,” says Ben-David.
“A free-trade agreement would ease that situation and allow expansion of overall trade between the two countries, including in fresh and processed produce.”
In 2012, the Vietnamese minister of agriculture came to the 18th International Agricultural Exhibition (AgriTech) in Tel Aviv, where he signed a cooperation agreement that allowed Israel to begin exporting bovine semen to improve the genetic performance of the dairy sector in Vietnam.
“Vietnam was the first big country to acquire this prized semen,” Ben-David says.
Milk revolution
Israel has been instrumental in bringing cutting-edge technologies to Vietnam’s crop and dairy farms, including modern drip irrigation and machinery for monitoring and milking cows.
During their five-day visit, the Israeli delegation visited a demonstration dairy farm inaugurated a few months ago near Ho Chi Minh City by Israeli experts. “We saw how it will serve as a base of training for mainly small farmers,” says Ben-David.
In 2010, the kibbutz-based company SAE Afikim inaugurated the largest project of its kind in the world and the biggest ever undertaken by an Israeli firm – a $500 million, five-year deal with TH Dairy Farms in Vietnam.
Using thousands of imported dairy cows, this project is expected to result in supplying Vietnam with 300 million liters of milk annually, produced at 12 state-of-the-art mega dairies and a milk processing plant built with Israeli equipment and expertise.
In 2006 and 2007, the Israeli embassy in Hanoi coordinated dozens of doctors and nurses in a public-health effort in nine locations in central Vietnamese villages in the mountainous region near the border with Laos.
The teams offered medical care and also distributed food, clothing and toys. In cooperation with a nearby breeding farm, they provided a farm animal to every household in the area so as to provide a long-term economic base to the impoverished villagers. They raised the animal until it calved, returned it to the farm and got to keep the offspring.