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Agricultural, peasants and rural
problems of Vietnam
Prof. Acad. 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
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. We need to conserve the food security, and the commercial
agriculture, fruit of the Renovation.
1. Separation of the economic and social
development
• In the rural development we observe a separation
of the economic and social development. The
agricultural development is economic, while the
rural development is social. People believe that
agricultural development leads to the
improvement of peasant income. But in the reality
we have seen that in the regions where agriculture
is very developed like the Mekong delta or the
Central highlands social problems are less
developed.
• The economic development needs the
specialisation while the rural development
requires the diversification.
Economic development needs to be
linked with social development
• Economic development in our country is strongly
influenced by the neoliberalism, promulgated by
the “Washington consensus», in the structural
adjustment programs.
• These programs failed in Latin American
countries and is criticised by many American
economists.
• Social development should be realised by a social
economy, promulgated by world social forums in
the altermondialisation movement
2. An industrialisation strategy based more
on internal forces, new technologies and rural
development
• The industrialisation based on cheap prices of
labour, land and environment will loss the
comparative advantage if the problems of
agriculture, peasants and rural will be resolved.
We need to search for other advantages based on
new technologies, on internal forces and natural
resources.
• The development of agriculture should be based
on the quality and the processing of products for
the increase of added value, and also the labour
productivity. If the excess of labour will remain in
the future only the mechanisation will not be
sufficient, we need to use biotechnologies for the
increase of the land productivity.
3. Reduction of the la disparity
cities - rural area
• This disparity consists mostly of labour productivity. The
new industry will be more and more capital intensive,
leaving the excess labour in the rural area.
• We need to realise together the industrialisation and the
urbanisation of cities and the rural area. (In Vietnam there
are rural regions where the population density are higher
than that of cities).
• We are observing regions where peasants are developing
industrial clusters very dynamic with rich social capital.
This will be a post-fordist development model like
marshallian industrial districts in Europe.
• Urbanisation of rural area will be realised by the
DESAKOTA model which will reduce the disparity cities –
rural.
The disparity urban – rural
• The disparity urballn– rural is also determined by the separation of
economic and social development.
• There is a lack of a strategy of structural economic change in the rural
area linked with the processes of urbanisation. The projection of cities
is conducted by the ministry of construction, while the projection of
the rural area is done by the ministry of agriculture. There is no
coordination between these two projections.
• The development of cities go to the development of mega poles with a
construction of infrastructures. This model increase the disparity
between cities and rural, causes difficulties to the development.
• There exist another model based on the development of medium cities
linked with the rural development, which is a decentralised
urbanisation or Desakota (in Indonesian: desa = city, kota = rural). This
model is applied in China (province of Guangdong and Jiangsu).
• The approach city-region can resolve this problem by integrating
projections of cities and rural area together. The development of cities
can draw the rural development
Environnement and social security
• Environment in the rural area is more and more
polluted. Experience of many countries shows that
if we entrust the protection of environment to
local communities, the protection of environment
will be an economic activity creating employment
and income to peasants.
• The network of social security and social
insurance should be developed by the civil society
but not by the state or the market.
• Experience of advanced countries demonstrated
that systems of social security and social
insurance for peasants developed by the social
economy is better.
4. Conservation of the food security
and the commercial agriculture
• Food security and the development of commercial
agriculture are fruits of the Renovation, We have to save
its.
• For this purpose we need a prospective of the structural
change of land use and of labour.
• The rural exodus is necessary for the industrialisation but
also to resolve employment problem in the rural area. But
we need a planning with scientific basis instead of leaving
this processes to happen spontaneously.
• The rural exodus according to the experience of advanced
countries will not cause the loss of agricultural land but on
the contrary increases the agricultural land because the
demand of cities habitants is less than that of rural ones.
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.
1. On the development strategy
• The economic crisis is the result of
the non sustainable development
strategy that leads the capitalism to
the cyclic crisis. That is also the est
aussi le result of the globalisation.
2. We have to determinate the
industrialisation strategy
• After the World war II the problem of the stratégy of
the industrialisation was discuted by the country in
developpement. The most discuted theme was the
import subtitution or the export oriented
industrialisation.Experience of the East Asian
country show the superiority of the second
tendency.
• Here we have a misunderstanding that the East Asian
countries exported the labour force through the
manufactured products but not he the raw material
like Sud-east Asian countries
• Today the most important source
for industrialisation is from the Foreign direct
investment.
3. To determinate the competitivity
advantages
For attraction of the FDI it needs to be based on
competitivity like in the network of industrial
cluster, the cheap labour, the low cost of the land
and the cheap investment in the environnement.
According to Michael Porter (1992) competitivity
advantage must have an originality and only
industrial clusters can find it.
In Vietam a thick netword of industrial clusters
and craft villages like in Italia, can help us to
seafor the competitivity
4. Structural change of the labour
force and the land use
• The essence of the industrialisation is the structural change of
the labour force. The difficultyof the employment creation is
that it exists in all country a surplus of working population that
cannot absorb urban industry and service,which is leaving as a
charge for the agriculture and rural area. The employment
creation needs a research and innovation in order to develop
inexistant jobs. It needs also the conservation of labour
intensive sectorsand the reduction of the birth rate.
• The structural change of the labour force needs to be
accompained by the structural change of the land use. In a
rapid industrialisation and urbanisation a high area of
agricultural land change to the construction area. The loss of
the food security is prevised. It needs to control the land use
change and to fight against the land speculation, for the
conservation of the food security.
5. Link between industrialisation,
urbanisation and the use of land
• The processus of industrialisation and urbanisation
began in the periode when the growth rate was more
than 7 % per year. So why the developpement was
optimist, with a growth rate of more than 8 %
Vietnam will have less than 10 % in the GDP after
2020.
• But from 2008 our country is in the economic crisis,
With a growth rate lower the speed of the
industrialisation and urbanisation will be slower. We
need to construct models linking these processus
together in order to reduce the ambitiousness which
can provoke new economic crisis.
The agricultural development
different from rural development
• The agricultural development is the economic
development, while the rural developpement is the
social one .
• The objective of the agricultural development is the
economic growth , the professionalisation and the
specialisation while that of the rural development is
the livelihood diversification, the income and the
social welfare.
• So why we founded the association for the rural
development for the promoton of the research on
rural development, and the provision of services and
the education to peasants.
Measures of rural development
• The rural development must be done by
peasants themselves.
• The major measure is the collective action,
from cooperative groups to cooperative
enterprises.
• Actors of the rural developement are basic
communities.
• The relations between actors are called
social capital social.
• The best institutions are social economy
institutions.