Accompanying the development of agricultural cooperatives

​(News Portal – Dong Nai) – In the new period, farmers and agricultural production face many challenges and difficulties such as increasingly demanding requirements from world markets; climate change; the implementation of support policies is still limited... In particular, cooperatives play a vital role in promoting production, especially in accessing new, effective production models as well as a bridge between farmers and State policies.

Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee Vo Van Phi visited the durian export growing area in Long Khanh City 

However, developing truly strong agricultural cooperatives to meet their important role in production development still has many difficulties and requires synchronous solutions, especially in terms of support policies.  

Many challenges and difficulties

Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Luan, Director of Lam San Agricultural Cooperative (Cam My district) pointed out that the added value of agricultural products is quite good but the added value for farmers is not much. Farmers are entering a new challenging phase, pressure from climate change, increasingly difficult market requirements... For example, some Vietnamese export crops such as coffee and rubber must prove before 2020 that these plantations are not come to be due to deforestation. In addition, the issue of reducing emissions in agricultural production; biodiversity... Difficulties from market risks are even greater challenges. Specifically, the cooperative's large pepper field project initially achieved very good results, but later farmers lost money due to market fluctuations.

Mr. Hoang Cong Phuoc, Director of Doc Mo Farm Cooperative (Gia Tan 3 commune, Thong Nhat district) said that climate change is a very concerning issue. Currently, farmers grow a lot of tissue-cultured bananas and abandon all other crops. The problem is the overuse of chemical fertilizers and within 3-5 years the soil will become infertile. If the ground cannot absorb rainwater, soil erosion and flooding will likely occur.

The cooperative wishes to establish a Doc Mo village with common cultural values of sustainability, living with the environment, and bringing health to people. Vietnam is currently not developed in terms of processing industry, and has not yet formed a chain of deep processing lines, taking advantage of agricultural by-products as fertilizer. The cooperative has been able to accomplish this chain, from investing in farming and processing to producing its own organic fertilizer for production. Thanks to that, the cooperative's processed products sell for very high prices, such as a processed duck selling for more than 1 million VND; 1 kg of banana candy sells for more than 500 thousand VND...

From another perspective, Mr. Le Su, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Green Agricultural Development Investment Services Cooperative (Nhan Nghia commune, Cam My district) shared: "I highly appreciate the direction and leadership from the province to districts and communes in agricultural development. Thanks to that, rural development has made great strides, especially in recent times. I hope the province will pay more attention and have solutions to make farmers more aware and responsible in safe production to increase the competitiveness of agricultural products in the increasingly harsh conditions of the export market."

​​A cooperative in Long Thanh district operates effectively with the model of growing organic chili for export 

Create a basis for future policies

Recently, although there have been many policies to support agriculture in general and agricultural cooperatives in particular, they have not been effectively implemented in practice. There is a reason why coordination between the parties is still limited.

According to Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Luan, farmers did very well in the large pepper field project of the cooperative, but the disbursement of support packages took a long time and not enough; documents and procedures are still complicated. In the future, production support policies must contribute to orienting farmers to pay more attention to quality. Lam San commune is doing well in ecological agriculture, so new policies should encourage this model to develop and have standards for what constitutes ecological agriculture. Improving farmers' knowledge is very important, especially for them to understand what is organic and ecological; understand soil, water, climate, market...

Pointing out a development direction that contributes to increasing the value of agricultural production, Mr. Hoang Cong Phuoc added that, currently, there are an increasing number of older people in Vietnam, so they need a safe place to live with clean water, food and environment. The need to create nursing homes for the elderly combined with ecological agricultural areas is huge. Currently, Thailand has a model for making eco-nursing homes for European retirees. Vietnam should pay attention to this model to welcome Japanese, Europeans, Americans... to live in retirement, contributing to high economic efficiency. ​

Accordingly, building an ecosystem associated with agricultural tourism is a strong and necessary point, so the state needs to support cooperatives and farmers to implement it. Although the provincial government is very interested in creating a favorable environment for investors, long-term investment in agricultural tourism still faces many difficulties and risks. In addition to difficulties in investing in roads, building on agricultural land, even with the model of building houses with green materials, still has legal problems and needs to be resolved.