By Dao The Tuan. President of the Rural development association

Agricultural, peasants and rural problems substantially are sustainable development problems
•    If the Renovation leads to a strong differentiation of the society, to the increase of urban- rural disparity this is a non sustainable development.
•    Agricultural, peasants and rural development problems are linked together and need an integral solution in the process of industrialisation and modernisation.

Agricultural problems
•    In the processes of industrialisation the part of agriculture in the GDP will be reduced but the  role of agriculture will remain important.
•    Two big industrial countries, United states and France are also big agricultural countries.
•    East Asian countries which almost lost their agriculture in the process of industrialisation could not be the models of industrialisation for our country.

Agriculture is necessary for:
•    The assurance of the food security of the country and the contribution to the international food security.
•    The development of the processing industry and the agricultural exportation.
•    To avoid the need for subvention for the agriculture in the future rich countries today.

In 2020 the agricultural sector will remain important
•    Developing countries have an excess of agricultural labour to high, even after the industrialisation the percentage of agricultural and rural labour still will be high, because the excess labour will not be absorbed by industry and services.

•    A prevision model made by the Carnegie  endowment for China shows that in 2020 when the part of agriculture in the GDP will be 4,8 %, the agricultural labour still remain 34,6 % and the rural population - 45 %.

•    For Vietnam a model made by ourself shows that at 2020 the part of agriculture will be 9,6 %, the agricultural labour will be from 22,6 to 49 % (according to different scenario) and the rural population – from 61,3 to 72,6 %..

The management of agricultural products quality
•    The exportation of raw agricultural products has a low added value. The state processing enterprises have a low efficacy. The development of small and medium enterprises is not supported by the state. The economy of scale are the causes of high production costs and low labour productivity. The  development of cooperatives for the improvement of scale is not encouraged.
•    The management of quality by the elaboration of IPG and of safe products responding to hygienic standards is still at the experimental stage. There is a lack of institutions to fight against fraud.

The market institutions
•    The contract agricultural system promulgated by the government leads to the monopoly of  enterprises. Peasants don’t have the bargaining power on the market. A system of fair trade is  necessary.
•    We need to organise cooperatives, integrating processing and products marketing with production.
•    The production of services to peasants can’t be  realised by the state and the market. We need to entrust this operation to peasants associations. A project with the GRET in the project DIALOGS, financed by EU, demonstrated the efficacy  of this system.

The defence against the loss of agricultural land
•    The defense against the loss of agricultural land is the base of the assurance of the food security.
•    We need a legislative basis more rigorous for the management of agricultural land and fighting against the land speculation. If we allow the rural exodus to produce spontaneously without any regulation and aid from the state, the lack of labour, the feminisation of the agriculture and the change of the intensification to the extensification will destroy  all the results of the agricultural production during the past  20 years of the Renovation.
•    The prevision of the lack of food in the XXI-rst century is an opportunity for our country in the development that we can’t loss.

New science and technologies
•    Our research system have not yet answer to problems of science and technology of the XXI st century like on biotechnology, biological agriculture  the atmospheric heating, the lack of agricultural land and problems of environment.
•    The climatic and market risks are not insured.
•    We have not yet a strategy of industrialisation of the agriculture and the rural area. In a context of lack of land and an exceed of labour, of small scale of exploitations, how to increase the labour  productivity

Peasants problems
•    Peasant was initiator of the Renovation, but today receives less benefice of this processes. Peasants are very poor and results of the poverty reduction are not linked with the economic development, so why it is not sustainable.
•    Peasants are citizens that don’t have benefit from the social security, mostly in the education and health, and are not insured against natural disasters and market risks. Experiences from different countries shows that the social problems can’t be resolved by the market.
•    The underemployment in the rural areas compels peasants to come to the cities for the work with a miserable salary and a status of secondary class citizen.

Rural exodus -  determined processus
•    Rural exodus is a determined processes.
•    The rural exodus is considered by K. Marx like a processes for the creation of a reserve of cheap labour force for the industrialisation in the development of capitalism in the XIX th century and now for the attract of FDI.
•    Chinese today consider that the detain of rural labour force in the rural areas in the past was obsolete. The rural industry rapidly developed in the 1980s, was  in the difficulties in the 1990s, because peasant prefers the rural exodus.
•    The rural exodus creates following impacts: Increases the labour productivity and the income of peasants, Reduces rapidly the poverty,   Induces the industrialisation of the rural areas and reduces the disparity between cities and rural areas, Improves the working class with young forces and higher quality (with training).

Creation of rural enterprises
•    For the development of commercial agriculture, we don’t have to destroy the family economy, but by the development of cooperatives, to help familial exploitations to change into familial farms. Cooperatives help familial enterprises to develop processing and marketing of agricultural  products. The creation of cooperatives must to be began by the formation of cooperative groups, school of collective action.
•    Familial farms are small agricultural enterprises need the help of SME programs.
•    Parallels we need to develop industrial small enterprises (of craft villages) and small services enterprises (including commercial enterprises) to push up economic structural change of the rural areas.
•    The rural exodus needs programs like programs of the construction of new economic zones in the past for the migration of peasants of the overpopulated areas. These programs will have training activities for the preparation of workers for enterprises.

Peasants syndicats
•    Peasants form a weakest social layer of the society. They need organisations for the defense of their rights. In many countries there exist peasants syndicates. The first right of peasants is the bargaining power on the market. After it the right to have land to assure family need, and the social security.
•    Following the advices of foreign experts the Vietnamese government accept to liberalise the land market which leads to a land speculation with a loss of a large area of fertile land. It is known that in the advanced countries there exist controlling systems preventing the loss of agricultural land like SAFER systems in France.
•    Peasants in general are passive, waiting the support from projects. But in reality there are areas where peasants are very dynamic, developing activities that the State could not do. We are studying this dynamism and the social capital of these areas, expecting to propagate this dynamism to other regions.

Rural development: sustainable  development
•    The sustainable development needs an economic development which is linked with a social development. We need to fight against the neoliberalism, building a social economy to conduct the social development.
•    Industrialisation could not be based on comparative advantages like cheap labour prices, land prices and  environment prices. We need a strategy based on technologies and internal forces.
•    We need to reduce the disparity between cities and the rural area by a strategy of industrialisation and  urbanisation, reducing the difference of the labour productivity between cities and rural area.
•    We need to conserve the food security, and the commercial agriculture, fruit of the Renovation.

The food crisis: agflation
•    The increase of food prices is the result of the inflation provoked by the crisis of immovable in the United states and the increase of the oil and food prices.
•    The inflation in Vietnam is an imported inflation linked with the import of dollars, of imported products and the speculation of enterprises on the prices of oil and food.
•    The crisis have a world dimension. And the loss of food safety is probable.
•    This is an opportunity for the development of agriculture and the resolution of the agricultural- peasants- rural problems.
•    The result of Vietnam in the solution of agriculture is appreciated by African countries which demand an aid for he propagation of Vietnamese experience.