A big, huge problem for the development of our Country in the next 5 years, 10 years and beyond. It is the story of digital transformation in Agriculture and Rural Development. What is digital transformation? It’s very simple: Digital transformation is doing things differently, what was done before, now do differently, thanks to data and digital technology.

Deputy Minister Nguyen Huy Dung gave an imaginary example of a traditional farmer and a digital transformation farmer: accordingly, Mr. Nam is traditionally a farming farmer. Nam’s digital transformation is still Mr. Nam, still farming, but in a different way.

In the pre-seasonal stage: Traditionally Mr. Nam has no credit history and no bank account, so he takes personal savings and borrows from relatives to prepare for the crop. .

Nam switched numbers using a mobile application on his smartphone to apply for a loan, using his payment history to guarantee the terms. Loan money is transferred to mobile money account.

Mr. Nam traditionally grows rice, because this is the variety he grows, has experience and planted last year.

Nam is digital transformation using a crop consulting application developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on a smartphone to select the most potential crops, and is supported in making decisions based on data on the status of crops. soil nutrition where Mr. Nam cultivates, predictions about local weather, even market demand and prices of agricultural products for this crop.

Mr. Nam traditionally does not have and does not know how to use a tractor, so he uses the rudimentary tools and cattle of an acquaintance to help.

And Mr. Nam changed his number to open his phone, choose a search engine to rent a tractor, just like people in the city choose Uber and Grab. He chooses the date and time that his family plans to plow and find a household in another commune confirming their agreement to provide the service.

During the growing season: Mr. Nam traditionally goes to the local market to buy pesticides and chemical fertilizers, but his agent often buys all the products he needs, so he can’t buy them.

And Mr. Nam converted the number to the e-commerce platform for agricultural tools and searched for a store specializing in selling agricultural chemicals. He quickly found and ordered the exact chemical at a very reasonable price compared to the dealer he usually bought from. He paid and chose to receive the goods at home without having to go to pick them up.

Pests and diseases have been particularly bad this season and have destroyed a portion of the area where Mr. Nam traditionally cultivates before he realizes and takes measures to prevent it.

Nam converted to receive a notification from a crop consulting application, providing information about pests and diseases that are likely to affect his farming area in the next few weeks and recommending him some options. disease prevention to avoid crop damage.

When harvesting, the traditional man urgently stores agricultural products in his small warehouse.

Mr. Nam, on the other hand, received a notification from a crop consulting app that reminded him of the optimal harvest time based on the price forecast and the measured maturity of the crop.

In the post-crop period: Anh Nam traditionally carries agricultural products to sell to local traders. This purchased agricultural product is depreciated due to good harvest. He received the money and most of it took it away to pay off the loan. He said to himself: Don’t do it next season.

And Mr. Nam converts the number of his agricultural products to sell on an e-commerce platform. This platform also takes care of logistics and transportation.

The above is just an imaginary example to illustrate that digital transformation is changing the way of doing things, changing the operating model, thanks to data and digital technology.

Agriculture accounts for 14% of Vietnam’s GDP, accounting for nearly 40% of the labor force. Agriculture has grown tremendously, has become the backbone of the economy. The results achieved are very proud.

But the challenge is how to improve efficiency, improve efficiency, and increase income for farmers.

From this perspective, the room for breakthrough agricultural development in the coming period is huge. Needless to say, agriculture will be a key factor for Vietnam’s economy to develop in a sustainable way.

Our goal in short is how farmers produce quality agricultural products, with the lowest cost but sell the highest price.

Digital transformation to develop digital agriculture is one of the keys to successfully accomplish this goal.

So what is digital agriculture?

Instead of giving an academic concept, let’s look at digital agriculture from a few specific perspectives.

In digital agriculture, besides traditional means of production, farmers use more digital materials, which are digital data and digital technology. Therefore, farmers will have to have some more knowledge and skills in trade, technology, biology, not just production skills. Instead of simply “looking at the sky, looking at the earth, looking at the clouds”, the farmer will “look at the data, look at the data and look at the data”. Instead of simply buying seeds and fertilizers, the lead farmer will buy data. And the State can help all farmers in Vietnam by making basic data available and free.

In digital agriculture, besides selling agricultural products, farmers can also sell experiences. The way we see should change, instead of just looking at agricultural production, let’s see more of the agricultural economy, instead of just the agricultural economy, let’s see more of the agricultural digital economy. Karma. Instead of just finding ways to meet the need of “eating to fill up”, let’s meet more needs of “eating well” personalization, the needs of a small group of different users. Digital transformation, digital technology allows to solve this problem. This is digital agriculture.

For example, a farmer simply sells a bunch of bananas, or a bunch of bananas at a market, where sellers and buyers meet face-to-face. By putting that banana bunch on the e-commerce platform, the farmer has provided customers with a new experience: Being able to buy a bunch of bananas without having to go to any market. By attaching Internet of Things sensors and surveillance cameras at banana trees from a young age, farmers can sell an entire banana tree, providing customers with a new experience: Being self-monitored, even self-managed I give a recipe for taking care of a banana tree from when it is a baby until the time of harvesting the banana tree without having a garden at all.

In digital agriculture, digital farmers can overcome the inherent weakness of millennial farmers. That is “the house lights are on, everyone’s fields are worked”. Because the more digital data is shared, the more valuable it is, the more it is shared, the bigger it is instead of smaller. And so, in digital agriculture, farmers will quickly see the benefits, help form an ecosystem, instead of small and fragmented production, and help form a value chain instead of merely is the chain link.

Digital agriculture from the perspective of digital government 

On June 15, 2021, TTgCP signed and issued Decision No. 942 approving the e-government development strategy towards digital government in the period of 2021-2025, with a vision to 2030.

Accordingly, the digital government has all safe operations on the digital environment, has a redesigned operating model and operates based on data and digital technology, to be able to provide more quality services. , make more timely decisions, issue better policies, use resources more optimally, create development, lead the country’s digital transformation, effectively solve major problems in development and governance. socio-economic management.

In digital agriculture, the agriculture and rural development sector provides 100% level 4 public services, presides over the development of digital platforms serving 9 million farmers, open data and provide open data on agriculture, connecting people farmers and businesses, forecast the market, popularize skills for people.

Digital transformation in agriculture and rural development, besides digital agriculture, digital farmers, digital countryside. Digital countryside is also a new, undefined concept. Here, I would like to share some results of phase 1 of digital transformation in Yen Hoa commune, Yen Mo district, Ninh Binh province. The implementation of digital transformation at the commune level can be considered as part of the new rural construction program.

From the above perspectives, it can be seen that digital agriculture is an old and new concept. What digital agriculture is essentially depends on how we think and how we do it. Therefore, the views above are certainly incomplete. Each of us can add our own perspectives.

 Digital transformation will help solve some specific problems for the agriculture and rural development sector

The problem in Vietnam is that the number of farming households is large, but the farming scale is small, the investment capital is small, and the equipment is old and outdated.

This problem leads to the weakness of lack of cooperation, fragmented and small production, and dependence on intermediary traders. Because of the large number and dependence on middlemen, we often encounter the problem of competition between the farmers themselves. Competing with each other to buy inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides, should pay high prices. Competing with each other to sell output agricultural products, so they have to lower prices. Crowd effect, one person pulls the other, the input is real but the output is also bad, easy to be manipulated and taken advantage of by traders.

Digital transformation can solve the problem by electronic exchanges, eliminating intermediaries, connecting directly between sellers and buyers. The essence of digital transformation and digital technology is connection.

Digital transformation can solve the problem of agricultural product prices, allowing to collect data on prices on the market in many different localities and countries, compare prices automatically, update with the frequency of goods. daily, weekly or monthly and even predict future prices.

Digital transformation can solve the problem with collaborative platforms, allowing farmers in the same industry to connect with each other regardless of geographical distance. Rural farmers do not have to go to the city to apply for a job at processing factories but can still participate in that value chain in their own hometown.

The problem of Vietnam is that farmers still mainly rely on qualitative experience, less on quantitative data, with almost no information on parameters on their own cultivated land such as weather, light, precipitation or minerals.

This problem leads to the weakness that farmers do not know about their natural advantages or do not know how to protect their long-term interests, but only run after short-term interests, for example, unbalance the ecosystem. ecology, natural environment, impact on biodiversity that nature takes a long process to accumulate.

Digital transformation can solve the problem by having an agricultural digital data platform for farmers to know and make the best use of their advantages. Public agencies can generate useful data for farmers by analyzing soil conditions, satellite images, weather data or other factors. The Soil Health Cards initiative with 158 million land health cards for each region in India has improved farmers’ productivity by up to 40% over the last 5 years in this way.

Having the data also helps develop a new service, a crop insurance service for farmers. For example, Kenya offers a weather insurance service that pays farmers if certain adverse weather conditions occur. On the basis of using 30 weather stations automatically collect weather data, thereby determining the cases of receiving compensation.

The Vietnamese problem is that post-harvest processing and preservation is only done on a small and rudimentary scale, leading to rapid deterioration of agricultural products, short duration, and poor quality when reaching consumers. reduce.

Digital transformation can solve the problem by using sensor devices to collect information about the storage environment, then process and analyze it. The data after analysis will be sent to the notification screen for drivers or warehouse managers according to service quality standards.

Digital transformation can help trace the origin of agricultural products, allowing transparency in the process and quality standards of agricultural products. Doing a good job of product quality transparency is the solution to help genuine farmers sell the right products with their efforts, is also a solution to help the quality of agricultural products increase and be more sustainable. steady.

The Vietnamese problem is slow shipping time, high transportation costs, leading to reduced competitiveness.

Digital transformation can solve the problem by connecting with carriers, optimizing warehouse locations and delivery routes.

The problem of Vietnam is that farmers are still not easy to access credits for production.

Digital transformation can solve the problem by deploying mobile money that allows farmers to easily access credit with just the smartphone they have. Through transaction and credit histories, farmers have access to loans with suitable interest rates.

Specific action

The first is the working hub. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will soon appoint and strengthen a unit specialized in digital transformation, soon develop a Digital Transformation Action Plan in the field of agriculture and rural development with a focus on developing the agricultural digital economy. The Ministry of Information and Communications can help build and work together through a joint working group.

The second is promoting readiness. The two ministries assigned focal points to coordinate and promote the initiative of universalizing digital infrastructure in the direction that each farmer household has a smartphone, each farmer household has a fiber optic cable, universalizing digital identities for farmers. In this story, in fact, the role of cooperatives is very important, it is necessary to focus on investment, support and capacity building of cooperatives.

The third is skill dissemination. The two ministries collaborated to implement the initiative to popularize digital skills for farmers in the direction of propaganda and dissemination through grassroots media, organizing training courses, training, and granting certificates of skills for farmers. farmers through digital platforms, online training, continuously developing knowledge for farmers. In short, we must realize that farming is a profession, but if it is a profession, we must professionalize it. In my personal perception, this is a traditional profession, this is a modern profession, this is a noble profession and this is a profession of eternity.

Fourth is the launch of the AgriTech initiative. A farmer alone cannot convert numbers by himself. On the one hand, the two ministries coordinated to launch a wave of technology enterprises serving agriculture and rural development. On the other hand, the two ministries coordinated to launch the wave that each farmer household is an enterprise, an enterprise applying technology.

Fifth is the development of the digital platform. The State does not have enough resources to help millions of farmers in the old way, but the State can help farmers in the new way, in the way of digital technology. The two ministries will coordinate, promote the development and dissemination of a number of important digital transformation platforms, and in 2021 will announce the Agricultural Digital Data Platform and the Traceability Platform. The State must be the one to lead, connect, orient and provide market information to farmers. Digital platforms will help promote cooperative economic development in agriculture. The two ministries join hands to find, develop and promote digital platforms to serve 9 million farming households, serve the needs of connection and cooperation between farmers, serve to connect 9 million farmer households. with 162 processing enterprises, connecting 9 million farming households with 100 million Vietnamese users,

Source: namdinh.gov.vn