The chain quickly expanded in big cities and the group never hid its ambition to become “the driving force to change the Vietnamese mind-set in doing agricultural business”.

If VinEco manages to keep its product quality high and stable, this goal might not be too far off from being realised, especially when demand for clean food has rocketed in a couple of years.

A survey by the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City shows that customers are ready to pay 30 per cent more for vegetables and pork if they have clear origins and are safe to eat.

In a traditional agricultural country like Vietnam, however, identifying clear origins of foodis difficult and sometimes impossible when basic foods – fresh vegetables, eggs, chicken, beef and pork – come from family farms producing small quantities before reaching customers on the market through local merchants.

However, this conventional method of food production and distribution caused the food safety issue to get out of hand, with many farmers – driven by benefits – abusing pesticides, preservatives, antibiotics and a number of banned chemicals to grow vegetables and beef up animals.

Tonnes of smuggled food also continue to flood the market every day. Last year alone, there were 5,000 cases of food safety violations resulting in fines, according to a report by the government in its year-end meeting on the problem.

Institute head Nguyen Do Anh Tuan told the Vietnamplus online newspaper that there have been more and more big enterprises jumping into the agricultural market, which promises “quick payback”.

“Real estate, construction or steel producing used to attract business in the past,” he said.

“But now agriculture is surfacing as a potential sector because of favourable natural conditions as well as cheap labour.”

Besides VinGroup, some large enterprises that had never invested in agriculture before are now pouring money into the sector.

Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group CEO Vo Hoang Son said the net benefit from selling cattle herds in the first quarter of this year reached 133 billion dong (Bt211 million), 46 per cent higher than the net benefit of all business fields from the same period last year at 91 billion dong.

Steel manufacturing mogul Hoa Phat group last year set up a subsidiary on breeding and animal feed with investment of about 2.5 trillion dong in an attempt to gain a slice of the animal feed pie worth more than US$6 billion (Bt211 billion).