Lao Cai opens up the 'digital flow' of the agricultural industry

In recent years, the agricultural sector in Lao Cai has gradually opened up and strongly spread the "flow" of digital transformation in the agricultural sector. This creates a premise for the formation of digital transformation and digital economy.

Lao Cai Department of Agriculture and Rural Development is actively supporting businesses exporting agricultural products with transparency by providing information about products through 3 popular languages (Vietnamese, Chinese and English). This is to strengthen publicity activities, promote consumption, to expand the export market of agricultural products, especially key products such as processed pineapple, tea products, bananas, cinnamon.

Lao Cai's agricultural industry is one of the first four localities in the country to build software to track agricultural products since 2017. Currently, Lao Cai has 327 safe agricultural product lines that have been granted QR Codes. The system supports trade promotion of agricultural products in Lao Cai province. It has over 183 businesses/cooperatives/facilities participating in an interaction, introducing and promoting products on the system with 311 participating product lines, especially strong and speciality agricultural products from 124 certified safe agricultural product chains in the province.

The information system for safe agricultural product chain management is certified in the province to ensure supporting functions in the management, supporting producers, providing products and assisting consumers in consuming products. Thereby, consumers nationwide can order agricultural products of Lao Cai on e-commerce platforms such as Postmart, Lazada, Tiki, Sendo.

Lao Cai also introduced 75 agricultural production facilities to put their products on the e-commerce trading floor like Postmart.vn, Voso, through the website "Phien cho khuyen nong" and social networking sites Zalo, Facebook. This is to introduce, promote and connect the consumption of agricultural products, protect the origin of goods, and support customer care for product traceability.

Reality shows that the competitiveness of safe and quality products and the reputation of enterprises and cooperatives have been enhanced. Customers also benefit more from these activities.

Digital technology is also applied by Lao Cai with remote sensing technology in forest resource survey and management. The integrated forest fire warning software used by a computer or phone with an internet connection will display a forest fire warning message every day according to the area and display a forest fire warning map quickly, promptly and accurately.

In production, Lao Cai has built and deployed the software "Farming Diary" to help farmers easily record activities in daily farming, and save time. It is easy to apply in production practice, contributing to solving difficult problems in management, and tracking product traceability to each household.

In the process of gradually implementing digital transformation, the agricultural sector in Lao Cai also encounters many difficulties and obstacles. Information technology infrastructure is not synchronous and modern. Human resources in information technology are still limited. Currently, the province's agricultural sector does not have a full-time official in charge of information technology. 100% of officers and employees of the units have been trained in information technology application skills. However, most of them only meet the requirements of office computing, not able to guarantee the digital transformation roadmap. There is no common data management system for the province's agriculture in a synchronous and interconnected manner, ensuring shared usage.

To open the "flow" of digital transformation in the agricultural sector, the agricultural sector in Lao Cai is focusing on building the industry's big data system; supporting the sharing of agricultural equipment through digital platforms; applying digital technology to automate production and business processes; promote the development of e-commerce. Even the field of administration and management needs to strongly apply digital transformation so that policies to support and direct production are implemented more timely.

In addition, it focuses on supporting the implementation of digital transformation for small and medium enterprises; e-commerce; building new smart-rural communes. Support businesses, cooperatives, and households with OCOP products and local specialities to create digital booths and provide electronic payment accounts.

Promote skills training, knowledge on how to trade online, create sales channels in the online environment, live stream on personal channels, design, manage and operate advertising page content, and build story content to promote products.