Agricultural mindset needs improving: Minister

Vietnam needs a changed mindset in agriculture, targeting a sustainable agricultural sector instead of that with high output, said Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan.

He made the statement at the Agricultural Economics And Business seminar held by the National Economics University on November 16.

“Businesses and entrepreneurs are as sensitive to the market as shrimp and fish being sensitive to the salinity of the water; Just a small change will lead to immediate response,” the minister compared.

“They are normally assumed to be on the gravy train. When the price of agricultural products is low, there will be reports that there is a phenomenon of ‘price squeezing’. But I would say: ‘never say these words’”, he added.

The reason is that the society is divided into producers and buyers. Traders are a group of people and if Mr. X and Mr. Y are highly benefited from price difference, they are just individual cases.

“If the Minister says that the prices of agricultural products are low because traders squeeze prices, farmers would feel much pity for the Minister. But it doesn't solve the problem.”

According to Minister Hoan, the important issue here is to connect producers and traders, pull them close together and have them share with each other for mutual development.

During the last National Assembly session, some reporters raised the question why the price of pigs was low. They also argued that traders squeezed pig prices below production costs.

To answer such questions, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development has travelled to pig stables at Thanh Oai District himself to seek answers from farmers.

The agricultural leader invited the reporters over and said: “The journalists interviewed me the other day, now it’s my turn to interview you. I will reward anyone who has the answers.”

The question is: Are you saying that traders are squeezing prices? So why a few days ago the price of live pigs was 30,000 VND/kg but today it is up to 45,000 VND/kg? If traders have the right to squeeze prices, why don't they press down to 30,000 VND/kg but have to buy at 45,000 VND?

"As a result, no one could answer," he said.

“Businesses and traders themselves do not have the right to squeeze prices because they are not the last consumers. They only buy meat to supply slaughterhouses or supermarkets, but supermarkets have not been able to press prices. It's all up to the consumers and the markets.”

He gave an example: When the demand for pork is low, the trader can only sell 2 pigs per day, but the farmer insists on selling all 10 pigs in the barn. So, it takes the trader 5 days to consume all the pigs. They have to buy food, care workers, shelter... They have to buy low prices to cover the extra costs.

Green production - a social responsibility 

Discussing strategic thinking on agricultural development, Minister Le Minh Hoan stated the inadequacy: "I don't know what concept we have based on to think food security is rice. Meanwhile, food is not only rice, but cereals, with protein and fat to feed people."

Even the current regulations on the National Land Planning clearly state that it is necessary to "stabilize 3.5 million hectares of rice land". But in Japan, such a concept no longer existed. Instead, they introduced the concept: “Food security and nutritional balance”. They approach the problem of people like that, not just eating to be full. "Perhaps the famine in 1945 still haunts and frightens us," Minister Le Minh Hoan said frankly.

He also said that the world is shifting towards green production and consumption. “In the past, selling products was thought to be very simple – an agreement between the seller and buyer. But recently, during my working session with the World Bank, their experts warned that the foreign markets one day will require the agricultural products to be manufactured according to a process that does not emit CO2, which is shown on their packages.

Discussing the view that green production is not only to create goods, but it is also a social responsibility, Minister Le Minh Hoan analyzed: Farmers think about how much they would earn if they could sell an extra dozen kilograms or one ton of oranges. But what they don't know is that all are trade-offs, including the health of consumers and producers themselves.

In a television report filmed on the outskirts of Hanoi, a quick test of people in vegetable growing areas showed that many local officials and farmers had pesticide residues in their blood.

Therefore, Minister Hoan said that farmers sometimes only calculate the cost of buying fertilizers, drugs, seeds, renting land, hiring labor... but they have not taken invisible costs for human health, for the exhaustion of the land, the deformation of nature into account. So agriculture has a huge trade-off if we take all the costs into account.

Changing mindset

Continuing the story of agribusiness, Minister Le Minh Hoan quoted from Prof. Phan Van Truong: “I work with many multinational bcorporations. Some corporations that I am the CEO have hundreds of thousands of employees, of all nationalities, skin colors, voices, and cultures. They told me one sentence: ‘There is no other nationality that can work faster than the Vietnamese’".

And Prof. Phan Van Truong added: "It's the mindset of a loser", because when the employee does something, he doesn't think of a better solution so he does it right away.

While in other nationalities’ thinking, they will start with a lot of solutions and will embark on working until they think that there is no better one. Maybe there are values that we have not deeply thought about that are the core to creating a mutation.

That may also be a reason why Vietnamese have been farming for thousands of years but still sell raw agricultural products. They just think about selling instead of keeping and thinking about how to process, combine ingredients, flavors,... to create hundreds and thousands of products from the original product.

According to Minister Hoan, all of the above issues will be mentioned in the Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development for the period 2021 - 2030, with a vision to 2050 that the MARD is developing to submit to the Government in December 2021.

For the first time, the agriculture industry has a long-term strategy. Because this is a very big long-term problem that requires a strategy and we will pursue it together. It would be very difficult if we built a house from its roof so we have to accept that we will begin to build it from its foundation.

Policy to ensure the development of organic agriculture

According Bui Thi Hanh Hieu - General Director of Bao Minh Agricultural Products Processing Joint Stock Company, businesses used to hesitate to work with local authorities.

“But after receiving guidance from the leader of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and other agencies in rice development, we businessmen find ourselves not alone.”

The company is currently linking a chain of 7 houses in developing specialty rice, organic rice with a planned area of about 3,000 hectares and processing rice products, supplying 4,500 retail points nationwide.

Following the wish of Minister Hoan to cherish and honor the value of Vietnamese agricultural products with an orientation to 2025, Bao Minh Company will implement IBO to honor the Vietnamese agricultural value ecosystem, establish a system of supermarkets, hotels and restaurants.

“In order to do that, we find it is necessary to establish a "thinking chip" in the brains of the young generation, with the guidance of the previous generations, to create a favorable environment for research and policy setting.

“Besides, we suggest that state agencies need to protect each specific growing area and have policies to ensure the development of organic agriculture, because businesses buy organic rice from farmers at a high price without any standards so they cannot sell it at a reasonable price,” the General Director said.