Although in recent times, cooperatives in Hai Lang district have changed positively in both quantity and quality, contributing significantly to the overall socio-economic development of the locality. However, practical operations show that this collective economic model still faces many difficulties, and the development is not commensurate with the potential and advantages of the locality. Therefore, there is a need for more support policies for cooperatives to develop more sustainably.
Struggling to find a way to preserve the tubers
With an area of about 30 hectares of land for growing nem, with a yield of 16 - 18 tons of fresh plants/ha, the Board of Directors and members of Dien Khanh Cooperative, Hai Duong Commune, have embraced the idea of building a brand of fresh nem as a local specialty. However, for many years, the Cooperative has been struggling to find a way to preserve nem.
Throwing field in Hai Duong commune - Photo: LT
Mr. Hoang Hai, Director of Dien Khanh Cooperative, shared that the harvest time for the tubers is around June every year (the only tubers harvest season of the year). However, for a long time, preserving the tubers has been a challenge for local people. Normally, during the harvest season, the price of tubers is low, but because it is difficult to preserve, they do not store them to wait for the price to increase, but after the harvest, local people sell them all.
Therefore, when the price of nem increased, there was nothing to sell, so the economic value of this tree was not as expected. Worried about this, the Cooperative took advantage of support from the Forestry Modernization and Coastal Resilience Project (FMCR Project) in Quang Tri to build 2 cold storage warehouses to preserve and reserve nem with a capacity of 100 m3 . The construction of the warehouse was completed in early 2024 but has not yet been put into operation because it has not found a suitable temperature for preservation.
Initially, the project designed a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius to preserve the tubers, but when implemented, it did not work out. “Tubers cannot be preserved at negative temperatures because if they are thawed, they will become soft and the quality will no longer be guaranteed. A member of the cooperative brought tubers to Hanoi to test preservation. After 3 months, 50% of the products were black and damaged. The cooperative also bought a refrigerator to test preservation methods. If tubers are preserved at 10 degrees Celsius, they will sprout like bean sprouts within 1 month.
We have sought more information from the Provincial Center for Research, Technology Transfer and Innovation and learned that the center's staff is conducting a research project on the process of preserving Chinese yams, which has proposed many temperature levels from 12 degrees to 2 degrees, the rate of Chinese yams sprouting is about 5%... It is expected that the project will be completed around October this year. Therefore, the cooperative is waiting for the results of this research as a basis for putting the cold storage into operation and purchasing Chinese yams for cooperative members," Mr. Hai confided.
No more support, people less interested
That is the situation that some organic rice cooperatives in Hai Lang district are facing.
In the fields of Luong Dien Cooperative, Hai Son Commune, due to the high terrain and inability to control weeds, after 2 seasons of organic rice cultivation, the Cooperative switched to organic rice cultivation, rice with VietGap certification because the process of organic rice production is not as strict as organic rice. Organic production can use up to 30% of chemical pesticides with a quarantine period as prescribed before harvest so that the rice plants can naturally eliminate residual substances.
The single-variety field model creates many advantages in harvesting - Photo: LT
Currently, the cost of producing conventional commercial rice is about 1 million VND/sao, the yield is more than 4 quintals/sao, with last year's price of 7,200 VND/kg of fresh rice, the profit is nearly 3 million/sao, minus costs, the profit is 1.8 - 2 million/sao, while the production of organic rice is about 2.5 - 2.8 quintals/sao, with the price of 13 thousand VND, the profit is 3.2 - 3.6 million VND/sao, minus costs, 1.3 million VND/sao, the profit is 1.9 million VND. But only when the province supports 700 thousand VND per sao (profit of 2.6 million VND/sao) will farmers do it.
Meanwhile, the province's policy only supports 2 crops, so when the support ends, people are not interested in participating. "People only see the immediate economic benefits, not the long-term ones, which are reducing environmental pollution and ensuring health safety for both consumers and producers. With the current commitments, the amount of rice sold to the company accounts for about 70%, the remaining 30% can be kept by member households as food for their families, so it is very secure.
Growing organic rice does not use chemicals, pesticides, herbicides... so farmers' health is not affected during the cultivation process in the fields. These are long-term benefits that need to be widely promoted to farmers in general and members of cooperatives in particular," said Mr. Phuoc, Director of Luong Dien Cooperative.
Also related to the organic rice production cooperation with Quang Tri Trading Corporation, Mr. Nguyen Huu Phuoc, Director of Kim Long Agricultural Service Cooperative, suggested that Quang Tri Trading Corporation should change to another variety because ST25 has a long growing period (usually harvested on September 10) while the district's plan on August 25 is to finish harvesting summer-autumn rice to avoid flooding.
Through production, it is shown that ST25 is not suitable for summer crop production because in hot conditions, the rate of empty grains is high, and the yield is not guaranteed. Therefore, ST25 should be chosen for the winter-spring crop, and for the summer-autumn crop, another variety or another high-quality variety suitable for Hai Lang fields should be chosen for both the winter-spring and summer-autumn crops.
In addition, the company needs to increase the purchase price for members because the input cost of organic rice production is high, so although the profit from organic rice production is 10-15 million VND/ha higher than traditional rice, if deducting the cost, the profit is still low. In addition, some members also have the idea of growing organic rice to enjoy the support policies of the province and district, but when the support policy is no longer available, they will no longer participate.
However, the cooperative determines that organic rice production is a sustainable, long-term livelihood, not for immediate benefits, so it is determined to mobilize people to participate. "The three long-term benefits of organic rice production that farmers are not yet fully aware of are: creating clean products to meet market demand; ensuring farmers' health and protecting the environment," Mr. Phuoc confided.
Meanwhile, at Van Quy Cooperative, the plan to expand to 40 hectares of organic rice in association with enterprises in 2025 was not implemented. Currently, the cooperative is maintaining the production linkage level of 24 hectares of organic rice as in 2024. The reason, according to Mr. Toan, Director of Van Quy Cooperative, is that the price of organic rice is higher than that of regular rice but still not enough to cover costs because of low productivity. "The calculated profit is not much different, but the effort to take care of it is more because we have to weed manually. So we have difficulty mobilizing members to expand the area," said Mr. Toan.
Promote trade
The 2018-2019 winter-spring crop is the first crop season in which 10 cooperatives in Hai Lang district have joined together to establish the Hai Lang Safe Agricultural Products Cooperative Union to implement an organic rice production model with a total area of nearly 50 hectares/year to create products branded "Hai Lang Clean Rice".
However, the model has not developed as expected. Due to many difficulties in production and finding consumption markets, some cooperatives have withdrawn from this linkage model. Currently, there are only 4 cooperatives participating with an area of about 20 hectares/year. “If we produce little, it is not enough to sell, but if we produce a lot, the output market is very difficult.
"Hai Lang organic rice" is produced at Van Quy Cooperative - Photo: LT
To build the brand “Hai Lang Clean Rice” it is necessary to achieve 4-star OCOP, to do so it is necessary to have a modern rice processing line such as dryers, milling machines, polishing machines... while currently the local milling machine system is mainly traditional rice pounding machines, so the products are not beautiful in appearance, and cannot compete with other high-quality brands on the market. We hope that the local government and specialized agencies of the province will support and guide in trade promotion activities for the product “Hai Lang Clean Rice”, said Mr. Nguyen Huu Phuoc, Director of the Hai Lang Safe Agricultural Products Cooperative Union.
In addition to the lack of trade promotion, some policies issued by the central and local governments are not specific, not close to reality, and difficult to implement. For example, the insurance policy stipulates that employees working in cooperatives and cooperative unions. According to this regulation, employees receiving wages under labor contracts of 3 months or more are subject to compulsory social insurance, but so far only a few cooperatives have been able to pay social insurance for key cooperative officials.
The reason is that the resources of cooperatives are still limited. Meanwhile, accessing preferential credit sources for production, business, investment in infrastructure construction, land to expand factories and construction items of cooperatives is still difficult. In addition, the qualifications and capacity of the management staff of some cooperatives do not meet the requirements, they are not dynamic in service business, mainly providing service; policies have not been developed to attract local children who have been trained at schools to work in cooperatives.
According to Mr. Dao Van Tram, Deputy Head of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Hai Lang district, although achieving important results, the agriculture of Hai Lang district is still mainly small-scale, fragmented, and each person does it on their own, so economic efficiency is not high, especially the consumption of agricultural products is still limited. Therefore, how to encourage more businesses to invest in agriculture and lead this chain is extremely important.
In this chain, there is a great need for representatives for farmer households, instead of businesses having to work with each household. This is also one of the reasons why the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has developed a project to develop 15,000 new-style cooperatives. However, in Hai Lang district, only Van Quy Cooperative has benefited from the support policy of this project.
To enhance the role of cooperatives, in the coming time, the province needs to issue more support policies, especially promoting joint ventures and partnerships with organizations, businesses as well as cooperative units inside and outside the province; promoting the formation of agricultural production areas according to chains... It is necessary to research and mobilize cooperatives to pilot the construction of production models with high economic efficiency to transfer to member households.
In addition, localities need to create conditions for economic development cooperation, invest in supporting science and technology, develop infrastructure, focusing on supporting cooperatives to invest in practical equipment in production, preservation, post-harvest processing of agricultural products, and improve product quality in rural areas.
There are specific solutions to help cooperatives access preferential credit sources to expand production and business, invest in infrastructure construction, participate in fairs and exhibitions to connect supply and demand, promote trade to promote local agricultural products as well as seek investment and cooperation opportunities with businesses and investors in the agricultural sector.
Lam Thanh
Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/hop-tac-xa-be-do-de-nong-nghiep-hai-lang-phat-trien-bai-2-can-chinh-sach-ho-tro-de-nang-cao-vai-tro-cua-hop-tac-xa-191994.htm
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