Agricultural science research needs a new wind and fresh idea

On June 25, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) held a signing ceremony for a Joint program on scientific and technological works between the two units under the chairmanship of the Minister Le Minh Hoan and Minister Huynh Thanh Dat. Attending the signing ceremony were also Deputy Ministers, leaders of relevant units, and representatives of several businesses.

With the great contribution of the scientific community, the participation of localities, businesses, science, and technology of the agricultural industry has innovated and effectively contributed to the advance of agricultural production, ensuring to improve the value, quality, and competitiveness of agricultural products and goods on domestic and international markets.

Several research results were transferred and applied on agriculture production including a new variety, technology process, technical advance contributing to the improvement of productivity, quality, manufacture expense reduction, profit increase, and bring high economic effectiveness in agriculture production.

The value created by science and technological adoption contributed significantly to the growth of the agriculture industry.

Thereby, the Joint program will group the guidelines and orientations of the two ministries to prioritize resources to focus on scientific research and technology transfer to serve the restructuring of the agricultural sector in the direction of increase added value and sustainability, associated with new rural construction.

Speaking on the cooperation between the two ministries, Minister of MOST Huynh Thanh Dat said: “Science, technology, and innovation in digital transformation still have a lot of room to develop and contribute more to the tasks of economic and social development and the agricultural sector. This is the content that the two ministries can continue to follow to develop very specific coordination and implementation tasks shortly.”

On the issue of law establishment, the minister said that the two ministries had jointly worked to build up The Law on Intellectual Property (amended) includes contents on protection for exploitation of plant varieties and livestock.

"Besides this content, the two ministries can work together to promote the registration of trademarks of Vietnam's key agricultural, forestry, and fishery products in international markets," Minister Huynh Thanh Dat suggested.

In the field of research, MOST said that the two sides would cooperate to define long-term research direction for developing product chain, focusing on main force products of the sector. Besides, the ministry was also assigned to build and plan the networks of state-own scientific and technical organizations including in the field of agriculture. The duo can plan and invest to develop science and technology organizations in the coming time.

Meanwhile, Minister Le Minh Hoan expected the cooperation would scale up the scientific research work to a new height, stressing that technology is evolving by the hour, day by day, the head of the agriculture industry emphasizes the importance of blowing more new "breathes", new ideas into the scientific research team.

“Our scientific research institutions and organizations are being fragmented and yet to create a connection as well as set up an image of the agricultural scientific research background of a country where agriculture is the mainstay of the country", Minister Le Minh Hoan raised the issue and desired that notable research centers would be built in the future.

According to the leader of the agriculture sector, the development of agricultural science research would be considered a force to attract more attention of the youth and students, drawing their interest to choose agriculture field as an occupation.

To promote the process of scientific research more strongly, Minister Le Minh Hoan mentioned the issue of public-private cooperation in this field. However, to realize the goal, it is necessary to have more appropriate policies, mechanisms, and even innovation in the thinking of scientists to adapt to changes in reality.

The two ministries highly agreed that in the 2021-2030 period, priority should be given to the effective implementation of national science and technology programs, focusing on key products of the agricultural sector and local advantageous products.

The two ministries will coordinate to build several national science and technology task clusters, several key ministerial-level research programs, focusing on several key commodities and products with competitive advantages, particularly, more attention is paid to research and development of deep processing technology, preservation technology, promoting digital transformation to create breakthroughs in quality and increase added value and improve the competitiveness of Vietnamese agricultural products.

The signing and implementation of the joint program on scientific and technological works for the period of 2021-2030 demonstrate the high political will and determination of Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan and Minister of Science and Technology Huynh Thanh Dat, continuing to affirm that scientific research and technology transfer are the key stages to create a breakthrough, contributing to the successful implementation of the Project on restructuring the agricultural sector in association with new rural construction.