Vietnam Focuses on Helping Farmers in post-WTO Era
The Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agricultural and Rural Development held a workshop in Hanoi December 18 to discuss issues relating to farmers since the country joined the WTO early this year.
Participants discussed earnings, policies to improve farmers’ living standards, and measures to narrow the growing gap between the rich and the poor. The increasing number of rural people migrating to urban areas was also on the agenda.
Doctor Do Thien Kinh, official of the Vietnam Science and Society Institute, said inequality in the rural areas is now bigger than that in regional and world countries. The gap between the rich and the poor in rural areas compared to urban areas reached 6.9 times in 2004.
A recent survey by the institute showed only one third out of 51 per cent of Vietnamese farmers gets support in needed. Doctor Kinh noted the fact that local farmers are faced by numerous disadvantages in the integration era is the germ of social conflicts.
Dang Nguyen Anh from the Institute blamed the gap for the migration of farmers from rural areas to urban in a hope of better life during the past years.
Vietnam has seen around 486,500 migrants during the past five years, with 57 per cent of them from rural to urban areas. Up to 60 per cent of the migrants’ income was sent to rural areas.
Experts suggested policies to develop sustainable agriculture and improve rural people’s living conditions to limit emigrants and minimize the disadvantages for people who move to the cities.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is developing a project relating to farmers, rural areas and the agricultural sector which is expected to be completed in June 2008, according to the Deputy Minister Do Xuan Hung. (VOV, Agroviet)
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