Speaking to nearly 500 farmers nationwide on April 9, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc dedicatedly listened to numerous questions and issues that farmers wanted to thoroughly resolve in regard to investment capital, consumption channels for agricultural products, material and spiritual life in the countryside...

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc speaks to farmer

Sell what the market needs
Before entering the dialogue, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc together with Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, six ministers as well as many representatives of ministries/departments visited a model of purchasing and processing agricultural products for export in Tu Ky, Hai Duong province.
Under the same institutional framework, yet at some places people can work, while at other places people are struggling.
The Prime Minister brought this example to share with audience in the dialogue. "The cold storage of this company reaches a cold temperature of -16 degrees Celsius; Japanese business partners love Hai Duong sweet cabbage and market-ready, eye-catching, big kohlrabi. Farmers working in this factory have a salary of 5-7 million dong each and do not have to worry about the way out for their products.”
Following that, the Prime Minister posed a question: "Why the mechanism is the same, but at some places it works, at other places it doesn’t? The main problem rests with the human factor."
Regardless of how much effort that has been spent, people still need supporting policies. In fact, two years ago, Nguyen Thi Ngoc's family in Ninh Giang district, Hai Duong province, borrowed over one billion dong from the bank to lease a land area for growing garlic and onions for export.
A Japanese partner visited Safe Farm - Ngoc family's agricultural and service cooperative - and was willing to buy a container of fresh garlic from the farm every week.
At present, Ngoc sells fresh garlic and onions directly in the farm at 20,000 dong per kilogram, while the production cost is nearly 10,000 dong per kilogram, resulting in a much higher rate of profit in comparison to rice cultivation.
Other agricultural models introduced in the dialogue show that carrying out clean and safe production, daring to invest, choosing the right product will all lead to success.
Yet, land constraints diminish many opportunities for farmers. As Ngoc herself shared at the dialogue: "We have just leased over 4 hectares of land, harvesting just 2 quintals per week. We do not dare to accept the more contracts from buyers because the commune authorities only lease land to us for a period of 5 years each time.”
“The five-year period is too short; we do not dare invest, because clean production requires one year of soil solarization, thus there are only four years left for actual cultivation."
Numerous conundrums were also sent to the Prime Minister during the dialogue regarding farmers being "stuck" with the way out for their products, price being sharply reduced upon successful harvests, Hai Duong farmers having to chop off kohlrabi, farmers in Hanoi suburb having to let cows eat radish some time after the Lunar New Year, and at times ripe watermelons being left to rot in the field because of the low selling price ...
"We have to sell what the market needs, find products that the market demands to produce instead of just rushing to grow and sell what we have," Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc exchanged with farmers.
Need to link six "players"
Previously, when discussing the agricultural model, people often talked about linking 3-4 "players", however, this time the Prime Minister asked to link six "players": farmers, entrepreneurs, banks, scientists, distributors and the state.
Immediately 2 questions were raised for the bank. Two successful farmers had questioned why they had not been able to borrow capital from banks, thus have to borrow from the “black” credit market with high interest rates.
The representative of the State Bank advised that in the coming two weeks, the bank should be working with these farmers, seeking to remove obstacles.
What the bank fears is whether the assets on the land used by these farmers satisfy legal requirements to mortgage to the bank and perhaps this is the reason why the bank has not lent money to the farmers.
The Prime Minister paid attention to the questions and answers of both sides, and posed an issue to be considered: whether the current procedures to mortgage assets on land were convenient for the people. The Prime Minister also pointed out the responsibilities of various government agencies at different levels for the appearance of “black” credit market in many places.
"We have great achievements, but we have not exploit in full the strengths of agriculture; a number of farmers live in poverty and instability; low productivity of rural labor results in lower productivity of the Vietnamese labor force," the Prime Minister pointed out.
The Prime Minister rendered that reorganizing production to promote the strength of each region and improving the material and spiritual life in the countryside should be on the “To do immediately” task list.
The Prime Minister required a vision to develop competitive agriculture. The chairman of the district, commune, or province must spend time on talking with farmers and answering their questions.
"We will sell what the market needs," the Prime Minister reiterated.