The ‘golden rule code’ of agroproduction

That is the view of Dr. Tran Cong Thang, Director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD), when discussing the 2021 - 2030 Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development - vision to 2050.

Minimum costs, maximum sales price

Achieving the goal of raising rural people's income by 2.5 - 3 times by 2030 (as mentioned in the 2021 - 2030 Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development - vision to 2050) is not a simple matter. The agriculture industry made a very good breakthrough in the previous period thanks to the utilization of land and the rotation of land use. But continuing this resource-intensive method may lead to negative impacts in the future.

In the past, we have done quite well in providing technical support to farmers in terms of cultivation, husbandry, and aquaculture, so the room to increase productivity and output is almost at its limit. In order to increase farmers' incomes, there is no other way but to make farmers change to agroeconomy mindset.

The "golden rule code" to achieve efficiency in agroproduction is “minimum cost, maximum sales price”. Many times, agriculture experts and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan have emphasized the importance of production linkages.

When farmers unite into cooperatives, cooperative groups to jointly buy agricultural materials in large quantities, they will certainly enjoy preferential prices than individual farmer households.

Households contributing land to form a larger plot will apply mechanization in production more easily and the cost will also be lower. Products that people work together to produce will be similar in quality and design, thus the door to connect and cooperate with businesses to underwrite products will be larger than ever. Because considering a business, no matter how big it is, it is impossible to cooperate with each and everyone from the nearly 10 million farming households in Vietnam.

And at a higher level, if we apply preliminary processing and processing technologies and add cultural and social values into a product, the sales price will certainly be much higher.

Withdrawing labor from agriculture

However, agroproduction is only one aspect of agroeconomy.

Reality shows that less than 20% of rural people’s income comes from agroproduction, the remaining 80% of income comes from the non-agricultural sector. A lot of rural workers go to work far away from home, mainly in urban areas. Many of them are not registered for permanent residence, do not have living and working conditions like urban citizens. This is worth concerning as it contains instability.

Therefore, in “the 2021-2030 Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development - vision to 2050” there is a very good content: formalize "informal labor" drawn from agriculture, enabling rural people going to work in urban areas to access opportunities like citizens there.

Apart from jobs that take advantage of regional-specific product brands, we need to develop local jobs by continuing to attract businesses to invest in rural areas, raw materials areas, particularly concentrating on processing, preservation, trade and service industries. The ultimate aim is to create an agricultural economic ecosystem along the value chain.

When we can withdraw labor out of the agricultural area, the field accumulation process will take place, a team of professional farmers will thus be formed.

The top agro-product export country

The strategy has set a very clear goal from now to 2050: Vietnam strives to become one of the top agricultural countries in the world with a modern, efficient and environmentally friendly agricultural product processing industry. In terms of agro-product exports, Vietnam ranks 17^th in the world. Many of our agro-products also have a good position in the world market. Vietnamese rice ranked 3^rd worldwide, coffee ranked 3^rd worldwide, and cashews ranked 1^st worldwide.

With the orientations set out in the Strategy, we can completely do well in production, processing, branding and become one of the leading countries in terms of agro-product exports. Agriculture is expected to become Vietnam’s identification mark.

the 2021 - 2030 Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development - vision to 2050 includes many new points, not only focusing on agriculture but also focusing a lot on stories surrounding countryside and farmers. The orientations are both inclusive and specific for all three regions.