Vietnamese farmers are fumbling to seek solutions for hard-solving problems on the threshold of the country’s integration into the World Trade Organization due to lack of adequate knowledge and financial capital.
The fact was pointed out at a conference participated by agricultural experts, scientists, and enterprises on August 15 in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho.
No practical and specific answers for the situation have been made at the event, where participants just focused on recalling all familiar issues related to WTO accession.
All agreed that Vietnamese farm produce is in danger of being swamped by foreign competitors because of domestic poor technology.
It is impossible for the country to succeed in the WTO when rice is planted manually, harvested by sickles and carried on shoulders, said an official from the Mekong Delta Rice Institute.
Domestic post-harvest technologies are also simply too backward to be competitive. Peasants have a set habit of manually treating their products through the first production stages, which cased great losses in quantity and harms the quality of the products.
Usually, domestic agricultural products cannot be kept for long time, and are not good in form, such as rice and bananas, he said.
Agricultural experts also attribute the low quality of Vietnam’s produce to lack of control over plant varieties. They said that there have never been clear-cut policies for specific variety reproduction nor any provision from the state.
Most commercial fruit trees were accidentally bred by farmers rather than purposefully by scientists, said Nguyen Minh Chau, head of the Southern Fruits Research Institute (SOFRI).
Moreover, peasants have not received any preferential assistance from the state. They have to buy high prices varieties, yet their output sells at ordinary prices.
According to a recent report conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), more than one billion tons of farm produce from Asian countries is poised to flood the Vietnamese market once the country enacts all its WTO commitments.
This could bring the domestic agricultural sector to its knees as harsh competition will come from both home and abroad.
According to Prof. Vo Tong Xuan from Can Tho University, the state should adjust the current policies so that farmers can gather under multi-functional cooperatives, combining into large farms that would be more powerful and competitive.
While not denying the effectiveness of the current solutions aimed at easing the negative impacts on farmers, both World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) have drawn the same conclusion that such measures do not bring much efficiency.
The organizations have suggested that Vietnam should identify which products are competitive and non-competitive in order to set suitable policies.
They have also advised Vietnam to further strengthen and support trade promotion through associations.
The government needs to protect local farmers in the post-WTO period by laying down a suitable legal framework that can help develop animal husbandry, and create favorable conditions for the farmers to associate with each other in production to create profuse goods.
Vietnam reportedly earned $5 billion from shipments of agro-forestry and seafood products last year, making up for more than 15 per cent of the country’s total export turnover.
Liberated Saigon
Vietnamese
