The WE TRACE application from Vergers du Mékong

The company

The Vergers du Mékong company was founded in Vietnam in 2000 by a Frenchman, Jean-Luc VOISIN, with the aim of promoting sustainable agriculture by creating marketing chains for processed local and natural products sold in Vietnam and Cambodia. These products are now star performers in both countries.

All the products sold come from local farms selected for their production methods. Two years ago, the WE TRUST application was launched to improve product traceability and help farmers adopt better practices.

The project

Jacques works for Les Vergers du Mékong. He is in charge of the product marketing chain and liaises with the Vietnamese teams responsible for creating a network of farmers who produce good quality fruit under good conditions. Mekong Orchards offers contracts to local farmers, who must comply with the production conditions set by the company and deliver a certain quantity of fruit.

This contract has benefits for the farmers: a stable and fixed income for the farmers for part of their production. The company does not buy all the fruit: this is easier to convince the farmers, who are guaranteed a stable income at the end of the month thanks to part of their production, but who can try to sell the other part at a price that suits them (i.e. more expensive if market prices are higher).

The association's marketing team visits the farmers every month to help them and give them practical advice. They are planning to write a book on 'good fruit growing practices'. But it's difficult because they have to update it often, almost every two months, to adapt to changing regulations and changing customers.

Short film produced by Let's Food in 2019.

The "We trust" application

A contract has been signed to enable the association to develop farms in Germany with the support of German funds. The aim is to develop an application for farmers to improve the traceability of fruit (where it has been produced and how?), while at the same time giving them advice and feedback on their practices. Farmers have to use it and the association can provide telephones if necessary. The application is tailored to fruit growing, and farmers enter all their data: irrigation, fertilisation, products used, etc. The problem is to explain to the farmers why it is important to collect this data and why the fruit needs to be tracked. There is a second constraint: data collection. We can't be sure that the farmers are recording everything, but the marketing team sent out every month is also there to check that everything is being done correctly.

The aim of the application is twofold: to know the history of the products, so that we can be transparent with our customers, and to have more general data on farming practices in the region.

So far, however, the application has not been very well received by farmers, who do not need this traceability. So they don't collect the data and don't enter it into the application. Without this data, they don't know how much their production costs or how much they produce.

This initiative sheet was written by Loëssa Loiseau, a student at Bordeaux Sciences Agro - November 2020.

Last modification : 24 Jan 2024.