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Organic production is often expensive. In order to reduce costs, many companies and farmers have fully recycled the by-products as organic fertilizers.
according to dr Nguyen Cong Thanh, director of Asia Organic Agriculture Research and Development Institute, the major difficulty in developing organic production and organic farming is that the cost of organic fertilizers is still quite high. This is because the nutrient content of organic fertilizers is significantly lower than that of inorganic fertilizers. Therefore, when using organic fertilizers, farmers need to apply a large amount of fertilizer.
GC Food’s organic production farm. Picture: Nguyen Thuy.
Due to the high cost of organic fertilizers, the cost of organic production is generally significantly higher than that of inorganic fertilizers. For example, in an intensive rice cultivation area with 2-3 harvests/year in the Mekong Delta, the cost of organic rice production will be 2-3 million VND/ha higher than conventional production.
Therefore, the application of the circular economy will help organic production and agriculture to develop better, especially by using local agricultural by-products to produce organic fertilizers for the next harvest, the following production cycle.
Recently, there are organic manufacturing companies that boldly apply circular economy to reduce production costs and solve environmental problems. A good example is GC Food Joint Stock Company (GC Food).
GC Food was founded in 2011 and initially specialized only in the processing of aloe vera and coconut palm products for export. From 2016, GC Food invested in the aloe vera materials area with the aim of supplying at least 20-30% of the raw materials for the factory itself. In the following years, in addition to aloe vera, GC Food organized the production of a number of other products such as melons, grapes, apples, etc. All products were made from organic farming.
Aloe Vera peel and leaves are used as organic fertilizer at GC Food’s Sunshine and Wind Farm. Picture: Nguyen Thuy.
Nguyen Van Thu, CEO of GC Food, said that in building the raw material division towards organic, GC Food faced the problem that the company’s plant-based products could not compete with farmers’ products in terms of price, and the management and hiring costs are much higher than that of the farmers directly.
Therefore, GC Food had to find ways to reduce input costs and promote large-scale production efficiency.
From the search process, GC Food found out that the circular agricultural model is very well suited to reducing the costs of organic production. In addition, circular economy companies can gain the participation of farmers and cooperatives in the region.
In order to apply the circular economy, GC Food organized the rearing of sheep and cows at Sunny and Wind Farm (Ninh Thuan). Sheep and cows are raised on grass and by-products of agricultural products. Sources of sheep manure, cow manure and husks, and aloe vera leaves are used and composted into organic fertilizer through a probiotic researched by the company. This source of organic fertilizer is applied back to the field of aloe vera and other crops.
According to Mr. Nguyen Van Thu, by closing the production phase and fully utilizing manure and crop by-products to make organic fertilizer, GC Food saves VND 3 billion to 4 billion in fertilizer every year on more than 100 hectares of crops planted by the company. At the same time, the full utilization of waste by-products has helped the company solve the problem of environmental pollution.
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