urgent, and brings great benefits to farmers. To enhance the positive impact in this aspect, in the coming time, the State needs to implement a number of measures:
- Develop a long-term national plan for agricultural product trade promotion. In which, agricultural products are classified according to quality and supply capacity to have a trade promotion plan for each type. For high-quality, stable products with large, long-term supply volume, they will be supported to expand the market and penetrate new markets. For high-quality products but with small or low volume, the State will only support product introduction. New products with the ability to expand scale will also be given priority for product introduction support. Low-quality, unstable products should not be included in the plan. The list of products supported for trade promotion with different levels will be adjusted regularly, depending on the development level of each product type. The long-term trade promotion plan is announced by the State and accordingly encourages product lines to strive for high-quality products with large, stable supply volume. At the same time, it ensures Vietnam's reputation as a major agricultural exporter in the world market.
- Trade promotion policies need to focus on analyzing market information including analyzing market prices, products, competitors, policies of trading countries, market trends; synthesizing information on laws and trade regulations of international economic organizations, bilateral trade agreements that will affect Vietnam's agricultural exports;... Accurate long-term forecast information is an extremely important basis for policy making, agricultural export management of the Government and for orientation and development of production and business strategies of enterprises and farmers. In addition, to ensure stable production and promote exports, competent authorities need to proactively monitor closely, proactively negotiate to resolve cases of false information about Vietnamese agricultural products and remove technical barriers of import markets, and strictly implement food hygiene and safety inspections for goods of animal origin entering Vietnam.
- Create favorable conditions for farmers to apply quarantine regulations and implement GAP procedures to conveniently consume goods through the method of providing certificates from competent state agencies. To avoid applying this method
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rampantly causing the effect of invalidating the certificate, it is necessary to strictly control the issuance of certificates to the right subjects and impose penalties if the certificate is issued incorrectly, forged or has a certificate but does not follow the correct procedure. At the same time, the State establishes an agency responsible for helping customers trace the origin of agricultural products. The activities of this agency both help protect agricultural product brands specific to each region and increase trust in Vietnamese agricultural products.
- Invest adequately in collecting market information to provide to farmers, considering this as one of the important responsibilities of the agency in charge of agriculture, equal to the function of directing production. First of all, the State needs to prioritize more funding, human resources and time for perfecting the system of collecting, processing and providing market information, warning information to farmers so that they can proactively cope with fluctuations in demand and prices in the world and domestic markets. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development must be assigned special responsibility for this task. This agency must regularly provide warning information on agricultural market demand in both the long term and the short-term market situation. If the forecast information can be expanded to the extent that it can make recommendations on how farmers should act, that is even better. But at a minimum, this agency must provide enough forecast information so that farmers are not disappointed due to production exceeding demand. The State also needs to encourage other agencies in the State apparatus to support agricultural management agencies in improving their capacity for information and market forecasting. For example, trade management agencies, diplomatic agencies, and state management agencies need to be assigned additional tasks to collect agricultural market information to obtain updated and accurate information to provide to farmers and agricultural processing and trading enterprises. The State should also provide more information on policies, markets, and forecasts of economic, social, climate, and international developments affecting agricultural production and consumption on websites, newspapers, radio, and popular television programs to regularly inform farmers, helping them change and learn how to plan modern production and business plans.
4.2.2.4. Support farmers to participate more directly in the agricultural product consumption system
Currently, Vietnam's rural economy is characterized by the absence of rural wholesale markets for agricultural products. Traders have to purchase most of their agricultural products at the farm gate or through collection agents. Farmers, traders
There are few opportunities for businesses and agricultural enterprises to meet in the market where they can compare prices, quality, and establish contacts. The presence of such places will promote the dissemination of information among the parties involved and will also facilitate quality control, the application of phytosanitary measures and environmental standards by the competent authorities.
It can be seen that with the current agricultural product consumption system, farmers depend a lot on the components participating in that system. With traders, there are hundreds of binding relationships such as lending to buy materials, guaranteeing product consumption, low purchase prices, all transportation, collection and inventory costs are deducted from the price of agricultural products for farmers regardless of their costs. However, without the activities of traders, farmers cannot consume agricultural products because they do not have their own consumption system. With processing enterprises, when facing difficulties in consuming processed products, processing enterprises also push inventory costs and costs of maintaining agricultural products to farmers, causing them to bear more costs that market prices are difficult to accept. With exporting enterprises, when exporting or bringing to supermarkets, farmers do not own the agricultural product brand, the benefits of the brand are mainly concentrated in supermarkets and exporters. With such a consumption system, farmers have no way to improve their income. On the contrary, they are forced to pay lower prices in a common way. The farmers' share in the industry value chain is too low.
To overcome this situation, the State, especially local authorities, need to support farmers to participate deeply in the agricultural product consumption system, thereby protecting farmers' interests. Specifically:
- Support farmers to self-organize into agricultural product consumption cooperatives. This is an activity that farmers in many countries have carried out quite successfully (Korea, Japan, Taiwan). The problem is that farmers must be aware of their own benefits and capabilities to self-manage cooperatives well. Agricultural product consumption cooperative models, to operate well, require the following conditions: First, the determination of farming households to support and self-manage cooperatives to serve themselves. Therefore, the State must create trust in them by giving farmers the right to self-determination in organizing and building in rural areas. Second, there must be a team of cooperative administrators with a rural revolutionary spirit, with the will and desire to serve the common interests of farmers, with management experience and knowledge, not considering
Cooperative management is a means of finding income, not the idea of getting rich on the backs of farmers. Third, cooperatives must have the motivation to accumulate to expand the activities of classifying, preserving, processing, transporting and consuming agricultural products. To do so, it is necessary to change the Law on Cooperatives in the direction of encouraging members to leave profits to build cooperatives such as building warehouses, building processing plants, purchasing means of transport, owning large agricultural product trading centers... Furthermore, agricultural product consumption cooperatives need to ally with each other to form a domestic agricultural product consumption network that tends to operate in unison. Consumption cooperatives should also combine the function of supplying materials to take advantage of invested production capacity and to provide comprehensive services to farmers.
- The government needs to promote the establishment of wholesale markets in rural areas or modern trading floors in concentrated agricultural production areas. The state should actively build quarantine and product quality certification centers so that farmers can apply for clean agricultural product certification themselves, creating conditions for farmers to directly bring their products to markets with high consumption prices such as supermarkets, restaurants, and hotels. The state should invest more in building large agricultural product trading centers so that farmers have an address to consume agricultural products, overcoming the current phenomenon of complete dependence on private traders.
4.2.3. Group of solutions on vocational training support and job creation for farmers
4.2.3.1. Raising awareness and labor skills for farmers in production development and international economic integration
The greatest and most fundamental resource for developing agriculture, rural socio-economy and improving farmers' lives quickly, strongly and sustainably is the high-quality human resource and the scientific and technological capacity of agriculture, farmers and rural areas. Therefore, it is necessary to create a new breakthrough in raising awareness and labor skills for farmers in production development and international economic integration.
Widely develop in rural residential areas a suitable system of general schools and classes; arrange and reasonably distribute the training system from primary to college and university in association with rural areas, aiming at the following requirements: First, improve education and intelligence for rural residents in general and farmers in particular in order to:
Universalize general education from low to high levels; Second, train to improve the qualifications and labor skills of rural human resources to meet the requirements of agricultural production and non-agricultural activities; Third, train a high-level workforce to intellectualize a group of farmers' children to meet the requirements of agricultural and rural economic development.
Strongly innovate the enrollment mechanism, tuition policy, scholarships, benefits, and content, programs, training methods, teaching methods, and learning methods to suit the practical needs of agricultural production development and rural economy in each region and area to soon train and provide the agricultural and rural sector with a high-quality, highly-qualified workforce, sufficient in quantity, synchronous in structure, closely attached to the fields and homeland.
Strengthen training activities, provide farmers with advanced and modern scientific and technical knowledge in agricultural - forestry - fishery - salt production; provide vocational training for farmers' children to change jobs. At the same time, it is necessary to focus on training and improving knowledge and capacity in economic management and social management for grassroots cadres, ensuring annual training of 1 million rural workers.
4.2.3.2. The State supports the development of non-agricultural industries and services to
shifting the rural economic structure towards progress
In the rural economy, along with agricultural development, the development of non-agricultural industries and occupations is the key content to achieve the goals of industrialization and modernization. In our country, the trend towards an effective rural economic structure is to rapidly increase the proportion of non-agricultural industries and occupations, while creating an effective link between agriculture and the non-agricultural sector. The development of diverse types of production and business organizations and the development of rural markets will influence the structure of industries and occupations in the rural economy, in which non-agricultural industries and occupations are the target of many production and business entities. To do that, it is necessary to study and develop a national strategy for the development of non-agricultural industries and occupations in rural areas. The strategy needs to outline basic orientations for the development of industries and occupations on the basis of exploiting the advantages of resources in rural areas and meeting the requirements for an effective link between agriculture and the non-agricultural sector.
In the process of strategy development, planning and policy making, it is necessary to identify
clearly define and adhere to the following important development directions:
Firstly, industry and occupation orientation, including: Agricultural product processing industries and occupations; industries and occupations serving agricultural production such as: production of materials, machinery and equipment, raw materials and equipment serving the processing industry, services...
Second, orienting the formation of industrial - commercial centers in rural areas, which can be in the form of: Export processing zones, industrial parks - or clusters, where processing facilities have a chain relationship with each other in terms of raw materials, supplies, and infrastructure serving marketing, such as warehouses, wharves, ports, airports, etc. to increase the added value of products, reduce production and circulation costs, and increase market connections. Special economic zones, with a system of preferential policies to attract qualified and intellectual workers from cities to rural areas, from lowlands to mountainous areas to work, attract domestic and foreign investors to invest in rural areas and difficult areas, encourage and develop business in oriented areas. Tourist areas - traditional craft villages, create products with high cultural content, with national characteristics, associated with eco-tourism and cultural tourism business activities, etc.
Third, development orientation in terms of scale and selection of appropriate technology: For industries with economic benefits due to scale such as sugar cane processing factories, artificial wood processing factories, etc., it is necessary to invest on a large scale, applying modern technology to improve product competitiveness. This characteristic affects the planning of raw material areas, balancing supply and demand, and must be carefully considered before considering other needs such as creating jobs for farmers, reducing poverty, protecting the environment, etc. For industries without economic benefits due to scale, it is necessary to consider applying high technologies suitable to market standards but with small and medium production scale to be able to develop in a decentralized manner, linked to rural raw material areas, and balanced with the investment and management capacity of economic sectors. For other industries, it is necessary to pay attention to investing in modern technology in necessary stages combined with mobilizing manual labor to create added value and jobs for workers.
4.2.3.3. Improve the effectiveness of vocational training activities for farmers and rural workers
There must be strong "involvement" of the entire local political system. Correct awareness of vocational training for farmers and rural workers is an opportunity to improve
quality of human resources for localities, improving the quality and productivity of labor; contributing to improving the competitiveness of Vietnamese agricultural products in the international market. Reality in recent times has shown that in localities where there is the attention of the Party Committee, the strong direction of the government and the active participation of political and social organizations... then vocational training for farmers and rural workers will achieve the desired results.
Vocational training for farmers and rural workers must come from the real labor needs of production, business and service establishments in the area; from the socio-economic development needs of each locality; and at the same time, based on the actual occupational needs of the people, not just temporary, movement-based activities. Therefore, the investigation and survey of needs must be carried out regularly; grasp the actual needs (by occupation, occupational group, job position, etc.) of the people in each locality (commune, district) and of enterprises. To do this well, in addition to mobilizing specialized agencies (labor, agriculture and rural development, statistics, etc.), it is necessary to combine with propaganda, career counseling, and information to each person about the labor needs of enterprises, etc.
Due to the regional diversity and the specific characteristics of farmers and rural workers (uneven educational levels, seasonal labor, farming habits, etc.), the organization of training courses must be very flexible in terms of training programs, training forms, training methods, teaching methods, etc. The training program must be associated with vivid, diverse and practical learning materials, suitable for the level of learners.
Vocational training for farmers and rural workers must be associated with job creation, labor restructuring; associated with hunger eradication, poverty reduction and contributing to ensuring social security in rural areas; associated with new rural construction. Therefore, in the implementation process, there needs to be close coordination between local authorities, training institutions and enterprises, especially the role of commune and district authorities. Reality over the past time has shown that where there is good coordination between these partners, vocational training has achieved very positive results (people have jobs, labor productivity and income of people are raised, poverty is reduced sustainably...). In particular, vocational training for farmers and rural workers must be closely linked with the Government's National Target Program on New Rural Construction for the period 2010 - 2020.
In order for farmers to become modern agricultural workers, in parallel with imparting knowledge and professional skills, it is necessary to equip them with knowledge of product safety standards, market knowledge, and business knowledge in the context of integration.
4.2.4. Group of solutions related to planning and implementing support policies for farmers
4.2.4.1. Innovation in policy making methods for farmers
Policymaking to support farmers is based on the view that farmers are the subject of policy. It is necessary to change the notion that as long as the State is good to farmers and policies that benefit farmers will be responded to by farmers. In reality, state agencies are often in a state of lack of information, especially information about the needs and ways that farmers can implement them. Therefore, sometimes policies that the Government considers good are not well evaluated by farmers. To change the way policies are made, it is necessary to give broad authority to farmers to directly develop, implement and check policies that affect them. For example, it is necessary to consult farmers about how support works for them in order to plan appropriate support policies. In particular, it is necessary to give farmers the authority to propose the need for State support to invest in socio-economic infrastructure and give them the authority to supervise the implementation of these projects. To improve the effectiveness of the implementation of State policies on agriculture, rural areas and farmers, it is necessary to seek farmers' opinions before promulgation. Furthermore, each policy should clearly identify priority goals and develop a thoughtful implementation plan so that it can be directed, evaluated and operated well. It is necessary to innovate policy-making thinking towards paying more attention to beneficiaries, the level of influence and establishing clear and transparent monitoring regulations. The State needs to reform administration towards serving the people, especially for farmers who lack experience in accessing public services.
Adjust the system of policies and regulations related to agriculture, farmers and rural areas in a long-term, systematic manner, taking into account the consequences of policy impacts. It is necessary to strengthen the research system and collect specialized information from the central to local levels to be able to adjust and direct accurate implementation. Quickly build a monitoring and warning mechanism when disputes or emergencies arise when foreign agricultural products flood the domestic market, threatening the