What can you say about Vietnamese agriculture after 20 years of renovation?

Our agriculture has made great leaps in 20 years of renovation. In the past we didn’t produce enough rice for local consumption but now we export rice and many other agricultural products, such as rubber, coffee and cashews. Vietnamese agriculturists are helping African countries to produce food. This is a good opportunity for Vietnam to become an agriculturally powerful nation.

However, Vietnamese agriculture is facing a lot of challenges: small production scale, low labour productivity and low quality of agricultural produces, agricultural land being narrowed, shortages of agricultural labourers because of migration from the countryside to urban areas.

How have farmer’s lives changed?

It is thought that renovation makes agriculture develop well so the life of the farmer is also better. But the fact is different. Our research on the shift of economic structure in economic regions shows that the regions that have the strongest development in agriculture and bring in the highest amounts of dollars to the country, the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands, are the most backward in education and health care. The proportion of children going to school in the Mekong Delta is lower than in the northern mountainous area.

In developed countries, a farmer can support five people. In Vietnam, the farmer’s income is too low. The income gap between urban and rural people in Vietnam is over three-fold. In the northern province of Thai Binh, many women don’t directly do fieldwork but hire workers. They have to pay a lot to hired workers but they must hire workers because they lack manpower and must keep their land.

Why has agriculture developed but farmer’s lives not improved?

Our market for agricultural products relies on the relationship between farmers and companies. Companies monopolise processing and distributing agricultural products. Farmers can’t negotiate and they suffer losses. Meanwhile the prices of inputs for agricultural products are on the rise. As a result, farmers gain little profit and some even incur losses because agricultural production carries a lot of risks.

One more reason, Vietnam’s per capita land is low. The area of cultivated land is being narrowed because of urbanisation and industrialisation. Farmers can’t earn high profit with small plots of land.

What do you think about rural areas since renovation?

Rural areas have undergone many changes but their development doesn’t match the development of agriculture. Many problems are visible in rural areas, poverty and hunger, environmental pollution, lack of social welfare systems, etc. because we don’t pay proper attention to these matters.

The current Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development was the Ministry of Agriculture in the past, and was in charge of agricultural issues. Along with renovation, the Ministry of Agriculture became the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development but most officials of the new ministry are technicians who lack understanding of rural areas.

In other countries, rural and urban planning go hand in hand. Urban planning must help promote the development of the surrounding rural area. In Vietnam, the Ministry of Construction is responsible for making urban planning and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is in charge of rural planning. Lack of a unified agency to harmonise urban and rural development and improper interests in developing rural areas will widen the gap between urban and rural areas. The country’s general development will be unsustainable.

Could you suggest some solutions?

The global food crisis is an opportunity for Vietnam to develop agricultural and rural areas. Through this crisis, we can see the extremely important role of agriculture and we have to exert ourselves to develop it.

Developed countries understand this. Two powerful countries, the US and France, are also among the largest agricultural exporters in the world.

Our agricultural land is modest and cut off into small pieces so we can’t develop agriculture on a large scale. It is necessary to have specific plans to move farmers to cities and turn agricultural land into industrial zones. We have to train and arrange jobs for farmers who lose land.

An important solution is agricultural development must go with rural development. Agricultural development aims at economic growth while rural development targets improving social welfare for farmers.

The state needs to have a comprehensive rural development policy, not only focusing on agriculture. This job should not be the task of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development only. We need to build cooperatives and associations of farmers and develop the social welfare systems for farmers. 

Source: VNE