High tech agriculture co-operatives
Focusing on high tech agriculture is very essential to the agriculture development. Recently, the projects on developing high tech agriculture co-operatives are carried. Mr Quang Trung, former director of the Rural Economics Co-operative and Development under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, speaks to Countryside Today newspaper on this project.
The project of developing agricultural co-operatives
Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc has recently shown a green light to the development of 15.000 new agriculture co-operatives by 2020. Obviously, the proposal to develop 15.000 new agriculture co-operatives is a very important project to ensure the success of the restructuring of the agriculture sector and the program of building new rural areas. Thee objectives of the projecct are as below:
- To maintain, consolidate and improve the working efficiency of about 4.400 agriculture co-operatives which have achieved significant successes in 2017, some 1.500 of which will apply advanced technology in their day-to-day farming activities.
- By 2020, some 5.400 agriculture co-operatives among the 7.200 that are categorized as weak will be recategorized as healthy.
- y 2020, another 5.200 new agriculture co-operatives will have been established and put in operation. At the same time, all weak co-operatives will be dissolved or change to other business activities.
Improving Vietnam’s agricultural machinery and innovations play a very important role in agriculture nowadays. In fact, high technology has helped with higher productivity and improved the quality of products while cutting the production cost towards the final goal of making agricultural products more competitive.
Recently, the Prime Minister decided to grant VN?100 trillion (US$4.3 billion) to support the development and application of high tech in the agriculture sector.
Until now, there are a few enterprises including VinGroup, Hoa Phat, Vinamilk and TH True milk who have applied high tech in production, and their earnings have more than doubled compared with traditional practices. Nevertheless, only 193 out of more than 12,000 co-operatives (1 per cent) have applied high tech in production. It is noteworthy that the use of high tech does not require much land – about 2.000 square metres is sufficient to start production.
Some challenges of applying high tech agriculture co-operatives in Vietnam
First and foremost, a wide range of co-operatives have acknowledged the benefits of high tech, but they do not know who they should contact for advice on how to apply it in their production.
Secondly, agriculture in the country still considers traditional practices in farming.
Last but not least, the application of high tech agricultural machinery requires a large amount of money for both the inputs and other supporting systems, and even advertisements for the products. For example, some farmers wish to apply Israeli technology, but the cost of US$1 million per hectare makes them confused.
Solutions to help farmers solve these challenges
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) already has a plan to develop 1.500 co-operatives which will utilize high tech in their production – accounting for 10 per cent of the 15.000 successful cooperatives in the country. Among 1.500 co-operatives that MARD support, 193 of them have already applied high tech in their production.
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Source: vietnamnews.vn