Toward Modern and Sustainable Agriculture Economy

Vietnam has set an objective to build a modern and sustainable agriculture economy during the 2021-2030 period. The objective is to transform Vietnam's rural areas into modern, developed agricultural production centers that employ advanced and environmental-friendly technology by 2050. The National Target Program for New Rural Development in the 2021-2025 period is designed to spur economic development, preserve rural identity, promote traditional culture, and improve people’s living standards in rural areas.

Creating individuality and diversity in localities

Chief of the Central Coordination Office for New Rural Development Mr. Ngo Truong Son said the National Target Program for Rural Development aims to have at least 80% of communes meeting rural development standards by 2025, including 40% of communes meeting advanced rural development and at least 10% of communes achieving exemplary rural development standards. No communes will have less than 15 criteria. The income per capita of rural people will increase by at least 1.5 times over 2020. Besides, the set of rural development criteria for the 2021-2025 period has also been revised and supplemented to be more suitable for the period. Specifically, new rural communes necessarily meet 19 criteria with 57 targets (an increase of eight targets over the 2016-2020 period).

Advanced new rural communes will fulfill 19 criteria with 75 targets (an increase of 18 targets over 2016-2020): Raising the quality of 35 targets, adding 34 new targets and revising six targets to match new requirements.

In 2021-2025, new rural districts will meet 22 more targets and advanced new rural districts will be added 12 targets. According to Decision 320/QD-TTg dated March 8, 2022, the Prime Minister assigned the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to coordinate with relevant agencies to research and guide the implementation of exemplary new rural districts to utilize local potential and advantages.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan, Deputy Director of the Steering Committee for the National Target Program for New Rural Development, said that the program cannot be applied the same in all localities. The image of new rural areas should be based on local traditional values and local specificities, thus diversifying planning ideas and rural landscape architecture. The countryside is characterized by open space, sociable people and nature-loving people. So, it is necessary to pay attention to blending green constructions and areas to create living spaces for the community, exchange and connection of rural residents and open access to urban areas.

Accordingly, localities will have many initiatives to introduce their images to other localities and even to the world, he said. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development also asked the Ministry of Construction to jointly host annual awards for rural landscape planning and architecture in the coming time.

Ensuring harmonious and sustainable development

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Tran Thanh Nam said: After more than 10 years of implementing the National Target Program for New Rural Development, we see the need for focused improvement of people's living standards, first of all, incomes in rural areas. To achieve this target, it is necessary to foster vocational training, and focus on agricultural and rural economic development. The One Commune One Product (OCOP) Program, launched in 2018 to date, has approximately 7,200 OCOP products, proving that this is the right policy of the Party, the State and the Government in raising incomes, creating jobs, improving people's living standards, and developing the rural economy. This program has aroused the potential, advantages and capacity of local people. We see this as a key program that needs to be further promoted in the coming time.

According to Minister Le Minh Hoan, building new-styled rural areas must be harmoniously combined with economic benefits and traditional values. Therefore, provinces and cities need to actively introduce specific mechanisms and policies in order to accelerate the progress and improve the quality of the program in accordance with actual local conditions.

Capital sources will not be enough to achieve all goals of an inclusive program that builds infrastructure, and combines economic development with culture and society in rural areas. For that reason, in addition to the central budget, it is necessary to mobilize local capital and call for other social capital sources to entice businesses to the countryside and create space for startup businesses in each locality. These are new aspects as compared to the past period but they will ensure harmonious and sustainable rural development featuring rich identity, profound knowledge and life quality for local people when they have access to education, healthcare, nutrition and gender equality, he emphasized.

Minh Ngoc (Vietnam Business Forum)