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Get rid of the curse of fragmentation and smallness in agricultural production

Over the past time, a series of incentives, and support policies have been introduced to build large-field models and link chains in production and consumption. But our country's agriculture has not escaped the curse of fragmented, small and unsustainable production.


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The project of cocoa fields interspersed with cashew nuts in Trang Bom District. Photo: Phan Anh

 

Due to the lack of strong and sustainable linkage chains, businesses worry about the shortage of capital to buy and sell products. Farmers are struggling to find stable buyers. Then, every season, the situation of "breaking the business contract" occurs – caused sometimes by the sellers, sometimes by the buyers.

Large production: Long and expensive investment

Since 2014, Dong Nai Provincial People's Committee has embarked on implementing policies to support and encourage the building of large fields. Next, the province implemented the Decree No.98/2018/ND-CP on policies to encourage the development of cooperation and association in the production and consumption of agricultural products.

The province is interested in implementing the above policies and investing in infrastructure for production areas. Enterprises, cooperatives and farmers are also interested in investing large capital in the goal of building a union, a chain of links from production to consumption. However, the results achieved are not commensurate with the potential.

Great investment

Deploying the construction of large fields in production, in the period 2016-2020, the whole province has 16 large fields projects approved by the provincial People's Committee. The implemented projects are entitled to many preferential policies on land; training support; plant protection services and many other policies to support the establishment of new cooperatives, support production according to good agricultural production practices; science and technology transfer; Loans with preferential interest rates, etc.

The project of cocoa mixed with cashew nuts in the area of ​​Trang Bom and neighboring districts also set a goal of developing thousands of hectares, with large corporations participating in product consumption. According to the plan, this is also a project that requires a large investment capital, in which, farmers invest capital in growing cashew trees, enterprises invest in processing plants in raw material areas, and localities invest in infrastructure, supporting farmers with a part of the cost of seedlings, fertilizers and an economical watering system.

Mr. Nguyen Van Thu, Deputy Director of An Vien Agricultural Service Cooperative calculated: "The total investment cost from seeds to an economical watering system, the initial investment capital of cocoa intercropping in 1 hectare is about VND150 million. I spent billions to invest nearly 9 hectares of cocoa trees intercropping with cashew trees. Enterprises participating in the project have also invested in a preliminary processing workshop and consumed cocoa beans for farmers with good and stable prices.

In addition, the results of the implementation of Resolution No. 143/2018/NQ-HDND on policies to support linkages in the production and consumption of agricultural products also achieved many outstanding results. Up to now, the whole province has formed 178 linkage chains with the participation of 97 enterprises, 60 cooperatives, 31 establishments and 12,540 production households. Of which, 49 safe food supply chains have been established, and 117 linkage chains are actively implemented by enterprises, cooperatives and farmers. Localities still continue to build production links associated with consumption.

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The province has nearly 12,000 hectares of mangoes, but there is still no effective chain of mango production and consumption. Photo: Harvesting mangoes at Dinh Quan District. Photo: Phan Anh

Lacking the sustainability in development

The results achieved in building large fields and chain links are still not commensurate with the large and long-term capital investment over the past time. Specifically, the number of 16 cooperative projects with a total area of ​​only nearly 6,000 hectares participating in the linkage chain. This figure is still very modest compared to the total area of ​​nearly 170 thousand hectares of perennial trees of the province.

Considering each specific project, the achieved results are also very low compared to the plan. Although the province's goal is to build large fields of hundreds or even thousands of hectares, when implemented in practice, most of the scale of cooperative projects only stops at a few dozen hectares.

Specifically, the project of cocoa mixed with cashew nuts in the area of ​​Trang Bom and neighboring districts set a goal of developing thousands of hectares, but after 6 years of implementation, it has only been replicated to 47 hectares with 22 participating households. Long Khanh rambutan is one of the few specialties of Dong Nai that has been granted a geographical indication. A few years ago, only Binh Loc Commune, Long Khanh city had thousands of hectares of rambutan. Accordingly, this locality has built the Binh Loc rambutan large fields with the expectation of building a specialized farming area, creating a competitive advantage for rambutan fruits to participate in the export market. But after many years of implementation, up to now, the project has only 28 participating households with an area of ​​over 33ha.

The 4C coffee consumption and production project is one of the first large field projects implemented in the province. According to the plan, the project will be implemented in 3 districts of Cam My, Tan Phu and Xuan Loc with a total area of ​​more than 600ha, with large corporations participating as investors. But after the implementation period, Xuan Loc District would like to withdraw from the project because it did not reach the area and farmers rushed to cut down coffee trees. Although the remaining 2 localities are still implementing, after the end of the project, these coffee-growing regions no longer exist. The reason is that in recent years, coffee has a low price, some areas of coffee are also old and unproductive, so farmers cut a lot of coffee trees. Mr. Tran Quang Hiep, Director of Xuan Que Agricultural - Service - Trade Cooperative, a unit participating in the coffee large fields project in Cam My city, said that after a couple of years of implementation, many farmers withdrew from the chain, cut down coffee trees because of the low profit. Among them, there is the reason that organic coffee is still mainly sold floating to traders at normal prices because the price of the company's outsourcing is not much higher than the common price, but the standards for acquisition are mush higher.

This is not an specific story about the ease of broken chain. Mr. Vu Van Dong, former Director of Ta Lai Agricultural Service and Trade Cooperative, Tan Phu District said that the VietGAP green-skinned pomelo tree project of Ta Lai Commune was implemented with enterprises participating in the linkage chain, guarantee to fully buy the organic pomelo products for farmers at good prices to supply to the export market. But after a period of implementation, enterprises have quietly withdrawn from the project, farmers' organic pomelos are still mainly consumed through traders at normal prices; Cooperatives are also almost inactive.

On the other hand, farmers are also willing to break the contract for immediate profit. Ms. Dang Thi Thuy Nga, Director of Xuan Dinh Agricultural Service Trading Cooperative, Xuan Loc district said that many years of building durian large fields, the cooperative has always tried to find partners such as supermarkets and export enterprises to join the chain of selling products for farmers. “But up to now, the cooperative has not really built a close linkage chain because the price of durian fluctuates too much, when this item has a good price, traders only need to pay a couple of thousand VND per kilogram higher, farmers are willing to sell outside, It is difficult for cooperatives to guarantee output when signing contracts with enterprises, so the output is still floating according to the market," Ms. Nga said.

The linkage chains fell into premature death because the link between enterprises and farmers was still loose and easily broken due to many reasons such as: support policies have not been put into practice; The capacity of the cooperative is still limited and has not really become one of the important links to bridge the chain of large commodity production. In particular, the association and consumption contracts do not have enough legally binding elements, not enough "power" to sanction one party or the other.

Phan Anh

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