Swine production and challenges in Vietnam after african swine fever: A case study in Peri-Urban Hanoi, Vietnam

anagement of ASF 
among Asian countries (Le et al., 2019). 
Lack of capital was perceived as the main 
issue in restocking pig production of farm 
households (Table 7) under the context of high 
production cost (breeding) as well as damages 
and losses due to ASF, particularly among other 
producers who had stopped raising pigs at the 
time of survey. Labor was not an issue for small-
scale farmers but was considered a problem for 
larger farmers who required quality labor for 
managing the herds. Observations from larger 
farms revealed that most of them were farrow – 
to – finish producers, with a relatively large 
number of sows. During and after ASF, labor 
requirements were much higher, i.e., better skills 
in taking care of the herds (especially disease 
management and biosecurity conditions), and 
following strict rules such as more frequent 
disinfection pig shelters, bathing, wearing 
 Table 5. Types and locations of pig shelters 
Indicator 
Small 
(n = 41) 
Medium 
(n = 35) 
Large 
(n = 21) 
All 
1. Locations of pig shelter 
 - In residential area 90.24 48.57 38.10 63.92 
- Outside residential area 9.76 51.43 61.90 36.08 
2. Criteria of hh’s pig shelters 
- Did not comply with technical requirements 53.66 51.43 38.10 49.48 
- Complied with technical requirements 19.51 40.00 61.90 36.08 
- Did not know 26.83 8.57 0.00 14.43 
 Table 6. Difficulties in swine production (% of respondents) 
Issues 
Small 
(n = 41) 
Medium 
 (n = 35) 
Large 
(n = 21) 
All 
Lack of land 43.90 22.86 33.33 34.02 
Lack of capital 63.41 42.86 66.67 56.70 
Lack of labor 0.00 5.71 14.29 5.15 
Insufficient techniques 58.54 60.00 47.62 56.70 
Others 2.44 8.57 9.52 6.19 
Swine production and challenges in Vietnam after African swine fever: A case study in peri-urban Hanoi, Vietnam 
974 Vietnam Journal of Agricultural Sciences 
protective clothes, and not allowed to go out of 
the farm during a cycle. This made the quality 
labor sources to be in scarcity, as one labor could 
not work for several farms as before ASF. Lack 
of quality labor, coupled with a higher number of 
pigs, could be a reason for a higher percentage of 
large-scale farmers affected by ASF. Aside from 
farmer’s capacity, the limited number of 
veterinary staff working with numerous small 
farmers also challenged animal disease control, 
including ASF (according to the interview with 
staff from DBVLP), this was also the case in 
Russia, as mentioned by Wang et al. (2018). 
Apart from capital and labor constraints, 
more than 50% of pig producers reported that 
they did not have an adequate understanding of 
technical know-how in rearing pigs (Table 7). 
Staff from the DBVLP revealed that the DBVLP 
and feed/veterinary companies offered frequent 
trainings on pig rearing. More than 80% of the 
respondents attended training on disease 
management (Table 8). More than 60% of pig 
producers treated sick animals by themselves, 
but approximately only one-fourth of them felt 
confident in doing this. Large farmers seemed to 
be more confident than others in terms of their 
capacity to treat sick animals (Table 8), most of 
them hired technically qualified veterinarians for 
farm management. While swill-feeding might 
increase the risk of ASF as in China (Wang et al., 
2018), this issue seemed not critical in Chuong My 
where most farmers used the manufactured feed. 
Two-thirds of pig shelters were located in 
residential areas. This was common among 
small-scale farmers (Table 6) but likely to relate 
with the ASF outbreak, with other animals living
 Table 7. Training and self- evaluation of treating sick animals (% of respondents) 
Indicators 
Small 
(n = 41) 
Medium 
(n = 35) 
Large 
(n = 21) 
All 
1. Farm household heads attended training on 73.17 94.26 85.71 83.51 
 - Feeding 43.33 63.64 61.11 55.56 
 - Disease management 93.33 90.91 100.00 93.83 
 - Others 13.33 9.09 0.00 8.64 
2. Self-evaluation of capacity to treat sick animals 
 - Good 14.63 17.14 61.90 25.77 
 - Fair 65.85 65.71 33.33 58.76 
 - Weak 19.51 17.14 4.76 15.46 
 Table 8. Treatment of waste from pig production 
Waste and methods of treatment 
Small 
(n = 41) 
Medium 
(n = 35) 
Large 
(n = 21) 
All 
Pig manure 
 - Biogas 85.37 82.86 100 87.63 
 - Compost 9.76 14.29 0 9.28 
 - Feeding fish 9.76 14.29 14.29 12.37 
- Others 0 8.58 9.52 5.15 
Waste water 
 - Biogas 78.05 77.14 90.48 80.41 
 - Dispose to drains 24.39 11.43 4.76 15.46 
 - Dispose to fish ponds 4.88 20 19.05 13.4 
Nguyen Thi Duong Nga et al. (2021) 
https://vjas.vnua.edu.vn/ 975 
in the same area (Dione et al., 2015). Backyard 
swine raising was one of the pressing issues in 
the rural environment, despite that most of the 
communes in the district had set areas isolated 
from the residential area for livestock 
production. Compost of manure (Table 9) within 
residential areas (among 10% of pig households) 
and direct disposal of waste water from pig 
production to common drainage systems could 
cause environmental pollution and would pose 
more difficulties in animal disease management 
for farm households. There was only one farm 
household that applied a manure pressing 
machine and claimed that it was quite efficient in 
addressing the problem of odor within the area. 
Conclusions and Recommendations 
The swine industry continues to be a key 
player in livestock production of Vietnam in 
creating livelihoods as well as pork dominance in 
the consumers’ meat basket. The ASF outbreak 
has caused devastating losses in the country’s 
production and food market. MARD and line 
agencies have taken various measures to control 
the epidemic. The government has also 
encouraged meat imports to address the shortfall 
in the pork supply in the domestic market. 
Despite the fact that the rate of reported ASF 
cases seemed to decline, the end of the ASF 
outbreak could not be predicted. Recovery of the 
swine industry is urgently called for, which 
requires a lot of effort to prevent and control ASF 
and address market-related issues. This study 
took the case in Chuong My district, Hanoi and 
show that ASF had a significantly adverse impact 
on the pig herd of the district, and main 
challenges in swine production recovery after 
ASF were identified, such as issues of quantity 
and quality of piglets and changing consumer 
preferences which could have been amplified by 
Covid-19 (ongoing), relatively cost disadvantage 
of domestic production under the context of new 
free trade agreements (such as EVFTA and CT-
TPP), disease risk (ASF under the condition of 
no effective and safe vaccine), and insufficient 
resources of farms to restock, and environmental 
issues caused by pig production in rural areas. 
To speed up the recovery of the swine 
industry in the future, the government and line 
agencies should focus on improving sow quality 
through breeding programs to improve the 
quality of grandparents and great grandparents in 
breeding units. Cost competitiveness in pig 
production requires lower production and 
marketing costs through reduced feed cost as 
well as breeding cost and building efficient 
marketing channels with strong linkages along 
the value chain. The promotion of good 
agricultural practices in pig production should be 
intensified, such as VietGAHP or biosecurity, or 
establishing the disease-free livestock production 
zone, and discouraging farmers to expand 
production in residential areas. Training 
programs to improve farmer’s production 
capacity and rural laborers in swine production 
must be offered free or at minimal cost, where 
rural occupational training programs could also 
be targeted. This also should be aligned with the 
National plan on ASF prevention. Government 
line ministries with partner banks or lending 
institutions may revisit their credit policies and 
offer easy and practical solutions to ease credit 
availability to small farm holders. Market 
information systems should be efficient to serve 
numerous small farmers to avoid excess supply 
(as experienced in the past). Pig waste 
management, as well as environmental 
management in the rural areas, should be 
strengthened. 
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