Nearly 2,500 livestock facilities in Dong Nai have stopped operating. Why?

Nearly 2,500 livestock facilities in Dong Nai have relocated or stopped raising animals over the past five years. The city government said 2,464 of 2,981 facilities had been affected, equal to 81.97% of the total. Of these, 2,456, or 99.67%, stopped livestock production rather than relocating.

The changes followed Resolution No. 03, adopted by the former Dong Nai provincial People’s Council in 2021, which defined areas where livestock farming was prohibited. Officials said livestock activity in densely populated and urban areas had improved since then, helping reduce disease risks and environmental pollution in residential communities.

The government attributed the closures to several pressures. Animal diseases had developed unpredictably, production costs made smaller operators less competitive with farm-scale facilities, and some farms failed to meet environmental protection requirements.

Officials also acknowledged problems with the land-use rules. Some farms had previously complied with planning requirements but later fell inside areas designated for residential or urban development under Dong Nai’s land-use plan through 2030. Some of those locations remain far from residential areas, have low population density and contain large areas of agricultural land. The city said applying the ban there could waste public and household resources and harm local economic development.

Some operators borrowed from banks to build animal housing, buy livestock or lease facilities to companies, but have not recovered enough money to repay their loans. Many workers are older and depend mainly on livestock income, making a shift to other occupations difficult. Dong Nai is studying new regulations covering prohibited livestock areas, swiftlet farming zones and support for relocating facilities. It says the policy will prioritize large-scale production organized in closed supply chains.