DL Umali Achievement Award for a Vietnamese scientist

(Part 2)

By Dr. Sosimo Ma. Pablico

AS PART of its sweeping doi moi reforms, the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1988 decentralized the distribution of farming inputs, freed prices, and gave farmers greater latitude in choosing crops. At the same time, the National Assembly, where Dr. Vo Tong Xuan was vice chairman of the Committee on Science, Technology and Environment, allotted land to farmers on long-term, inheritable leases of 10, 15, and 20 years.

Farmers were also allowed to sell all their products freely and were no longer required to sell rice to the sate after paying land taxes and commissions. Rice subsidies to government employees and soldiers were also stopped. By early 1989, the country began producing 91 percent of its food and eventually began exporting in 1989. By 1990 it was the third largest rice-exporting country in the world.

In his acceptance speech, Dr. Xuan said 3 stages must be observed to create a critical mass (students, farmers, and government cadres) to participate in national agricultural and rural development (ARD) efforts: commit hearts and heads to ARD; choose an appropriate approach to ARD; and assure a political will to ARD.

To achieve a high level of proficiency, he believed that every extension worker must be a multi-disciplinary person, i.e., knowledgeable and skilled on the various aspects of agriculture science and technology, including principles of environmental economics, including entrepreneurial skills. For this reason, a new curriculum for a four-year program called “Integrated Rural Development” was designed at Angiang University where he was elected its rector.

To further help the situation, Angiang University deployed agriculture students to supplement the training provided by the provincial departments of agriculture by conducting applied research trials on farmer’s fields and organized mobile farmer training courses in the rural areas. Each student worked with a participating farmer, sharing new skills and knowledge as they obtained new scientific data. The cooperating farmer later became an extension agent himself.

Dr. Xuan also convinced television station officials in Ho Chi Minh City and Cantho to air his weekly “Agricultural Technology Program”; cooperated with the daily radio program “Uncle Tam’s Family,” a serial comedy featuring advice on current activities on agricultural production in the Mekong Delta, and gave informal lectures during cadre meetings, and participated in discussions with political leaders.

He attributed the backwardness of agricultural development in the Mekong Delta to the lack of appropriate science and technology “I found that the more one comes close to the farmer’s reality, the faster one’s professionalism grows, and the more one finds his/her attachment to the country and the people becoming stronger.”

He added: “My modest contributions have produced some significant results at the least cost to national as well as provincial budgets. Yet these results have created a scientific reputation to my university and a prestige to well-educated intelligentsia, carving in the hearts of the millions of farmers we’ve reached the image of government servants who devote time, efforts, and knowledge to the betterment of the farming communities.

“My achievements in ARD are the results of a systematic approach in integrated rural development, which I have called integrated natural resource management. This approach takes into account all the assets the farming community possesses (using agro-ecosystem analysis) and provides assistance to farmers on how to make full use of these assets. Our research and development in increasing food production, particularly by mobilizing farmers to use brown planthopper resistant rice varieties and to apply integrated farming techniques on acid sulphate soils, was an essential contribution toward Vietnam’s rice production supply.”

Since ARD is a government responsibility, he added, “Governments should not only be competent technically, but also possess a strong political will to come up with incentive policies for farmers and agribusinesses.”

(Readers may reach columnist at spablico@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/harvest-time/ For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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