Grain Marketing in South Vietnam

Excerpts: Vietnam has traditionally been deficit in wheat and feed grains and, since 1964, has also imported rice. Use of new, high-yielding rice varieties is dramatically increasing, however, and feed grain production is expanding to meet a growing demand. These production increases create problems for the marketing system, particularly as Vietnam works to again become an exporter rather than an importer of rice. Consequently, this study to recommend improvements in the grain marketing system was undertaken as a part of a larger U.S. Department of Agriculture project in cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development. This report on recommendations for improving the grain marketing system includes: (1) a description of the system and analyses of its weaknesses, (2) recommendations for changing the current system over time so that it will meet Vietnam's projected needs, (3) suggestions on how to initiate the changes and when they might be most appropriate, and (4) cost coefficients relating to grain drying, threshing, storage, and processing which were required for a production-distribution model being developed in another phase of the USDA-USAID Vietnam project.