Focus on Investing in Research, Creating and Transferring New Varieties, Preserving and Maintaining Special Agricultural Varieties

What are the land, climate and soil conditions in that area? Does that agricultural product have high economic value? Or just implement social policies such as job creation, hunger eradication and poverty reduction?... from there, there will be a very detailed planning map for each area suitable for what kind of plants? How much development area?...

There needs to be close coordination between central and local ministries, branches in developing and implementing agricultural production according to planning. Research and promulgate policies to encourage farmers to produce agricultural products according to approved planning and have strong enough sanctions to punish farmers who violate the planning. This is an extremely difficult task, requiring a combination of many factors such as: propaganda, State support policies... Because if not strictly implemented, farmers will, for immediate benefits due to the high price of certain agricultural products, be willing to cut down the planted trees to invest in planting other types of trees or will develop spontaneously. Thus, it will lead to waste of money, natural resources and break the goals of the planning.

Specifically, the plan can be implemented and carried out in the following stages:

- Phase 1: No planning of residential areas, farmers just let them live according to their old habits. The state plans an entire hamlet or inter-hamlet on the fields and gardens of farmers to grow one type of tree, for example: oranges, grapefruits,... then all farmers must grow oranges and grapefruits.

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- Phase 2: When farmers have caught up and farmers see the benefits for them, the State will upgrade the planning of residential clusters to 500ha-2000ha, from which the cultivation area will be expanded. However, when implementing this plan, there will be land disturbance. When building a residential cluster, a farmer will lose his land, the State will have to transfer the land to another farmer. For example: Farmer A has land in the residential cluster planning area.

10,000 m2 . A farmer with a house area of 150 m2 will lose 8,750 m2 . The state must take land from other farmers into residential areas without losing cultivated land and hand it over to farmer A, exactly 8,750 m2 . If we resolutely follow such planning, Vietnamese agriculture will be stable and ensure a source of goods for large-scale production.

3.3.2.2. Focus on investing in research to create and transfer new varieties, preserve and maintain special agricultural varieties.

Although Vietnam's agricultural export turnover has increased, as the author mentioned in Chapter 2, it is mainly due to the increase in volume, while the increase in value per unit of agricultural product is very limited, one of the reasons for which is that the quality of Vietnam's agricultural exports is poor compared to some countries exporting the same type of agricultural products in the region and the world. The main cause of poor quality of agricultural products comes from "seedlings". According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in the period from 2001 to 2007, the state budget expenditure for scientific research was 1,741 million VND, a very modest figure compared to what agricultural products have brought to the economy.

Therefore, in the context of deep integration into the world economy, what needs to be done is to review and re-evaluate the entire system of providing plant varieties, research and breeding work at schools and research institutes. Thereby, it is possible to eliminate poor quality and low-yield plant varieties. Research and breed agricultural crops with good quality and high yield and transfer them to localities with suitable climate and soil conditions. In addition, it is also necessary to research, preserve and develop traditional and special plant varieties that only exist in Vietnam and build these agricultural products into key agricultural products, unique to Vietnam such as: Lo Ren- Vinh Kim star apple, Lychee

Luc Ngan, Hung Yen longan, Binh Thuan dragon fruit, Hoa Loc- Cai Be mango, Hai Hau- Nam Dinh fragrant rice, Nang Huong rice- Long An, Long Thanh rambutan, Cai Mon durian, green-skin grapefruit- Ben Tre...

To carry out this work, it requires adequate investment in scientific research from the State budget in the early stages, including investment in research and appropriate remuneration for researchers. After a period of time when their position has been affirmed, schools and research institutes can change their form of operation towards self-accounting by selling researched agricultural products to the market.

Conduct research and establish an investment fund for research on improving plant and animal breeds; the capital to establish this fund is partly provided from the state budget, a percentage of the after-tax profits of agricultural product exporting enterprises, and a certain percentage of the annual income of farmers...

3.3.2.3. Promote investment in rural infrastructure, create favorable conditions to attract foreign investment in the fields of agricultural production and processing of agricultural products for export.

It is necessary to clearly identify farmers, agriculture, and rural areas as the “foundation and pillars” in the industrialization and modernization of the country. All the basic factors of agriculture contributing to the overall development of the country have been mentioned by the author in previous chapters, so I will not repeat them. Here, the author only mentions issues related to solutions to prioritize investment in agriculture and rural areas.

One of the main reasons why the agricultural sector attracts little foreign investment is that, in addition to the low profits and many risks, another fundamental reason is that the infrastructure in rural areas is very poor, travel and transportation are difficult, and costs are high...

That is why the State needs to focus on:

- Continue to invest heavily in rural infrastructure in a synchronous and comprehensive manner, including: roads, bridges, irrigation, electricity, dykes, canal consolidation, irrigation water, domestic water, rural environmental sanitation... However, the biggest difficulty now is that the annual state budget is not capable of simultaneously ensuring all tasks. Therefore, it is necessary to create a mechanism and find other possible sources such as:

+ Continue to issue construction bonds and government bonds to invest in rural infrastructure;

+ Promote socialized investment, create open and favorable mechanisms, encourage economic sectors to participate in investing in this area or the State and people to work together;

+ Using a part of the annual state budget that was previously used to support exports and give export rewards to enterprises that exceeded export turnover, but now this form has been eliminated because Vietnam has to fulfill WTO commitments, so it should be used to invest in rural infrastructure;

- Continue to allocate preferential credit capital for investment in agriculture and rural areas through the program of solidifying canals, rural roads, aquaculture infrastructure and rural craft village infrastructure. Prioritize preferential credit capital for industries, attracting many workers, projects serving the processing and preservation of agricultural, forestry, aquatic and seafood exports, in order to solve jobs for farmers, promote the transformation of crop and livestock structure, increase labor productivity, reduce costs, and apply science and technology to production.

- It is necessary to conduct a comprehensive review of agricultural and rural infrastructure construction projects that have been invested in and are being invested in. Thereby, evaluate which projects are ineffective, have spread out investment, are prolonged... and resolutely stop them immediately, and transfer capital to focus on investment in

Effective projects and works that are lacking capital; projects and works that are about to be completed to be put into effective use soon.

- Attracting domestic investment capital and FDI capital in the form of: Promoting administrative reform, enhancing the responsibility of officials and civil servants in performing their duties, paying special attention to compensation and site clearance, accordingly: it is necessary to promptly study and submit to the National Assembly amendments to the Land Law in the direction of removing difficulties in compensation and site clearance that investors are facing (according to investors' feedback, land allocation alone has 15-20 procedures. Many investors who want land must negotiate with the people while the responsible management agencies are indifferent, afraid of taking responsibility, so they push the issue to each other, leading to prolonging the project implementation time. Currently, to have land for production and build agricultural processing factories, on average, it takes enterprises 1-2 years, some even take 3-4 years). At the same time, gradually eliminate the protection mechanism for domestic production by import tax barriers.

3.3.2.4. Increase the value of agricultural exports through focusing on investment in technological innovation and improving processing quality.

We can generalize the operation process as follows: production, processing, preservation, and service activities; in which we have only done well in production activities, while processing, preservation, and service activities are still very weak, while with the current trend, the following activities bring great economic value.

Therefore, technological innovation and improving processing capacity are extremely necessary requirements today, especially in the context of Vietnam becoming a member of the WTO and participating in the common playing field of the world market.

The requirement of innovation in agricultural processing technology today is to re-equip and re-equip a modern, synchronous production line system to create products with diverse types, designs, styles, and prices.

low…, creating products that are competitive enough in the foreign market. However, in the context of capital difficulties, we should not invest widely in the entire industry, but need to select key products and industries to focus on in-depth investment, creating spearhead products in agricultural processing and export activities. These must be products and industries that have the ability to grow rapidly over a long period of time and have large turnover, such as rice, coffee, rubber, pepper…

In the immediate future, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ministry of Industry and Trade shall coordinate with the People's Committees of provinces and centrally-run cities and relevant ministries and branches to organize, direct and immediately implement the "Project on developing the agricultural and forestry processing industry in the industrialization and modernization of agriculture and rural areas to 2010 and orientations to 2020" approved by the Prime Minister No. 69/2007/QD-TTg. In particular, it is necessary to conduct an accurate review and re-evaluation of the scale and level of processing technology of existing facilities, in order to have appropriate policies and solutions on the basis of taking economic efficiency as the main priority. We must quickly deal with factories that are using 1960-1980 generation technology that are dilapidated and cannot meet market demands, especially for highly competitive product groups and large markets. We encourage and support businesses to build new factories that use modern technology to create high-quality products that meet the high demands of the world market, while increasing processing capacity and increasing the proportion of deeply processed products.

In summary, to improve the quality of the processing industry, it is necessary to solve the following main problems:

- Planning to build concentrated, large-scale raw material areas with export orientation;

- Building industrial factories for processing agricultural products near raw material areas;

- Establish and strengthen relationships between raw material producers and agricultural raw material processors.

Promote the role of the State in creating an environment to improve the effectiveness of the relationship between "houses" in science and technology development. This connection not only allows to best solve the capital problem for researchers, but also solves the technology problem for users. The equipment, production lines or technology created from this connection not only serve a business, but can also be transferred to production households, can be transferred to localities, so the research efficiency will be multiplied many times.

3.3.2.5. Tightening economic links in agriculture - four houses: farmers, businesses, scientists, and the state

In recent times, the economic linkage of the "four houses" of the State, farmers, scientists, and businesses has helped a lot in the consumption of agricultural products of farmers. However, this linkage is not really sustainable, often one of the parties often violates such as: when the price of agricultural products in the market is higher than the contract price, farmers do not want to sell, or only sell very small quantities to businesses, keeping them for sale to outside traders. When the price of agricultural products in the market is lower than the contract price, businesses do not buy agricultural products from farmers or buy less or cause difficulties for farmers through technical barriers set by businesses. For scientists, the transfer of science and technology to farmers, especially for new plant varieties, is still limited, the ability to meet requirements is still low (domestic production only meets about 20% of demand), leading to the situation that many farming households buy plant varieties floating on the market of unknown origin, not inspected, leading to

to low quality and economic efficiency (for example, some places import Chinese corn seeds to plant in Vietnam but they have no seeds; imported hybrid rice seeds to plant produce empty seeds). The State's development planning work still has many limitations, the promulgation of related policies is slow and many policies are not close to reality, difficult to put into practice...

It is necessary to overcome the above weaknesses by understanding the market's requirements for what kind of agricultural products are needed? What is the quantity, quality and price? From there, there is a relatively long-term plan for the production of agricultural products for export. On that basis, review the planning, arrange the planning of production areas to suit the market's requirements, with the natural and economic conditions of each region. Based on the regional planning, enterprises promote trade activities, search and correctly identify the market for agricultural products. Depending on the market conditions and the capacity of the enterprise, choose the form of signing contracts with farmers. In addition, it is also necessary to build sanctions to handle cases of violation of signed contracts. Any party violating the contract must compensate the other party for damages. For scientists, it is necessary to focus on research to introduce new, high-yield varieties and transfer technology to farmers, at the same time closely follow and guide farmers through agricultural extension programs. The relationship between scientists and farmers must be through specific contracts, ensuring the rights of both parties after harvest.

3.3.2.6. Improve the quality of support services and public services to create favorable conditions for export enterprises.

As mentioned above, support services are extremely necessary and play a very important role, bringing high economic value to the export of goods in general and the export of agricultural products in particular. However, this support activity of Vietnam is still weak compared to other countries in the region; from stages such as transportation, loading and unloading, inspection, recognition of origin, procedures

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