Only 17 percent of farmers know how to grow rice?

Quoting a recent survey in Gia Lam district, on the outskirts of Hanoi and northern Bac Ninh province, associate professor Tran Duc Vien, head of Agricultural University, reported that only 17 percent of farmers know how to grow rice.

Mr Vien said people think growing rice is very easy but it is not true. The biggest obstacle is that nobody cares about farming when it is not respected in society.

Mr Vien added that currently Vietnam exports around 3 million guest workers. If each of them saves US$200 a month, together they will amass US$7.2 billion a year, equal to annual overseas Vietnamese remittance and nearly equal to the total of national agricultural exports in recent years. However, millions of farmers have not been trained to work abroad.

Nong Thi Thanh Tam, vice chairwoman of the northern Cao Bang provincial People’s Committee, expressed her concerns about human resources training in rural areas. Mrs Tam said Cao Bang province does not have enough vocational training centres for trainees.

Minister Phat said that in the 2000-2005 period around 20 percent of workers were illiterate and did not finish primary school. Hence the number of qualified workers was 16.88 percent. The number of farmers who attended training courses on agriculture and forestry was only 17.67 percent. This poses a great challenge to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) to reach the targets for qualified non-agricultural labourers and qualified agricultural labourers which accounts for 60 percent and 40 percent of the total workforce by 2020.

Granting scholarships to 1 million farmers’ children?

The MARD estimated that the country has more than 25 million agricultural labourers, accounting for 55.7 percent of the country’s total workers and each year around 600,000 people reach working age. By 2020 when Vietnam becomes industrialised country it will have around 17 million rural workers. Therefore, each year, more than one million workers in rural areas need to be trained in order to move to non-agricultural sectors. The number of workers who need training in the agro-forestry and aquaculture sector is estimated at 600,000 a year. The industrial and handicraft sector also need about 440,000 trained workers a year while rural areas annually employ around 60,000 officials.

For the time being, training centres across the country can only train 600,000-700,000 skilled workers a year under both short-term and long-term courses mainly di\ue to poor infrastructure facilities and teaching and learning equipment, as well as poor incentive policies for disadvantaged rural workers in mountainous and remote areas.

Minister Phat proposed that annual scholarships should be granted to one million farmers’ children. It is essential to develop training programmes for rural farm workers. It is also necessary to allocate more funding to the national target education programmes and short-term training courses for farmers themselves.

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan, who is also Minister of Education and Training, said: “Human resources training is a must for rural agriculture’s modernization and industrialisation process. We cannot provide training services to every farmer but if we have 17 million farmers in 2020, then we have to train one million farmers who in turn can help to train other remaining farmers”.

Establishing a university for farmers?

Prof. Academic Dao The Tuan, Chairman of the Scientific Association for Agricultural Development, said that he is working with a number of domestic universities to set up a university specially for farmers.

He explained: “Vietnam’s rate of students per capita is two times higher than that of China. In fact, many graduates are not even employed yet, while provinces want to establish more universities. Hence, I want to set up a university that will focus on providing training courses for farmers.”