VietNamNet Bridge - In our country, the population who live on agriculture accounts for 70% of the national population. 57% of working-age people working in the agricultural sector, but they generate less than 20% of the country’s GDP.

According to Prof. Vu Trong Khai, we are witnessing, facing the recession in agriculture. As earning from agriculture is not enough for the living, farmers have to abandon farming to go to the city to do anything, which even does not require any skill but still brings about higher income than farming. However, the life of farmers living in urban areas and industrial zones is still very precarious and their living standards are very poor.

As the agricultural population creates less than 20% of the country’s GDP, they can benefit within that number. GDP per capita in the rural areas is only $200 compared to the national average of $1,600/person.

According to a survey by the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development, the average income of a farmer household with four members is VND60,000/day ($3), below the poverty line. 

Up to 47.4% of farmer households are not satisfied with the present life; 50% of households have debt, of which only 13% have access to the bank loans and the remaining 87% have to borrow from loan sharks. The annual savings rate is only VND5-8 million/household. Of which 80% of savings is for hedging.

Thus, a vicious cycle goes on. Productivity is low, then the income is also low; the income is low, then the savings is low; the savings is low, then investment in agriculture is small; investment is small then the productivity is low...

Thus, the achievements of agriculture and the tremendous role of agriculture as the "pillars" of the economy become an obscure covering the hardships of the farmers. They have to sacrifice too much.

Mr. Khai believed that agriculture renovation is actually the "liberalization" which helps promote the existing potentials. Like a tightly compressed spring, when it is released, it springs up and after springing up it returns to the original state. 

In other words, the efficiency of the Instruction 100 and Resolution 10 on agricultural renovation has expired after a period of time because they cannot provide the ability to grow in quality.

Going deep inside, we can see that we have "untie" policies but we lack the “promoting” policies. The "promoting" policy is totally different from the "untied" one. The promoting policy’s role is to bring the development to a new level, improve the quality, increase the competition to meet the increasing requirements of the market.

Therefore, the "promoting" policy should be planned with a scientific and practical basis, requiring policy makers to not only have conscience and courage but more important the wisdom. 

Practices always change so policies have to change to adapt to the change of the real life. In the context of international economic integration, they must understand the WTO rules and international practices. Subsequently, the policy implementation capacity of the public administration and civil servants must be improved.

On the other hand, conscience and courage of policy makers is showed through avoiding influence of interest groups to not sacrifice the interests of farmers.

Policy making and implementation in Vietnam is still passive.

With a small production scale, on average each farmer household has only 0.8 hectares of land. Their cultivation technique and equipment are very poor and backward. Farming is still the profession of "hereditary". The processing and trading of agricultural products at present do not change much compared to the past. The economy in general and agriculture in particular are involved in the global value chain with the weak position.

With low added value, more deeply integrating into the global market, increasingly negative socio-economic and environmental consequences the country’s agriculture brings about, and the poorer Vietnamese farmers are. 

Inadvertently, Vietnamese farmers are "subsidizing" in terms of price and "environmental fee" for the people of the countries importing rice and agricultural products of Vietnam. The more rice we export, the poorer our farmers are and our environment is more polluted. Our farmers and agriculture are reluctantly doing "international mission on food security" because of institutional defects and backward technology in the era of globalization.

Why do we fall into this situation? Mr. Khai said there are many reasons. On the macro level, after the accession to the WTO, we do not take advantage of global integration. In contrast, we are affected by negative impact of globalization.

At the micro-level, the important reason that is "the cause of all causes" is that we are missing the "big farmers' and professional agricultural administration. In other words, our institutions have not formed a team of professional farmers specialized in large-scale production.

Just imagining this to be clear. A farmer who has only several hundreds of square meters of land does not need cooperation with businesses to join the production chain. Because his production scale is too small, he does not need to know signals from the market. He only knows what traders tell him. Moreover, with that small piece of land, he cannot apply modern technology into production.

Hoang Phuong