22 Self help organizations of Viet Nam farmers, Prof Dr Vu Trong Khai and Pham NGOC Thu, Viet Nam
23 Decentralized rural development and the role of self help organizations, Lionello D'orazio, Viet Nam
In the areas where old agricultural cooperatives have been closed down or their role diminished, farmer households have become autonomous economic units. However, they face problems in transactions and marketing, as well as difficulties in strengthening their ability in expanding production and overcoming competition in markets. They constantly struggle to get rid of controls and price depressions caused by private business and middlemen. Faced with these obstacles, the demand for collaboration has arisen everywhere and farmer households have established many different forms of self help organizations.
Stemming from the demand for production, as well as benefits, desires and current state of local people, at some time, the forms of collaboration have appeared in various scales with different activities and components. The farmers are, in all consciousness and of their own will, free to participate in the organizations which will return to them the crucial benefits mutually harmonized by both State and farmers.
Irrigation team
Some farmers with plots located nearby have established an irrigation team, with activities including sharing benefits, exchanging labour and expanding technical capacity in production. The team includes all farmer households using the same irrigation canals, which serve to produce rice as well as vegetables in higher and lower fields. The farmer households self-irrigate to nearby fields and have also established joint production teams. These joint teams are different from irrigation teams in the scale and scope of services provided. In An Giang province, the joint sub-team and joint team in production are models of production, existing for a long time with basic, complete and stable properties. In order to meet production demands, different teams are established by farmer households, including but noit limited to pumping, plowing, seed supply and harvest teams. The irrigation team is basic. Farmers using the same irrigation lines have applied the same technical progress in production with the same production schedules, including the same kind of seed and the same pest management techniques. When they need help with plowing, they share the cost of renting a tractor and therefore, tractor owners gather themselves into a plowing team to prepare the plots for all fields under a strict production schedule.
In Ho Chi Minh City, farmers with plots located nearby have joined together to regulate the use of water resources from the drainage system, sharing water fees and electing a team leader responsible for restoring the small watering system. For teams serving areas from 100-150 ha, the team leader must prepare a plan, mobilize the farmers and guide them to restore the small watering canals. The farmers have formed a pool to purchase a tractor, which serves primarily to provide team members lower prices. After that, it can be rented to farmers outside the team to produce an income. If the team cannot afford to purchase a tractor, the village people's committee will guarantee a loan from the Agriculture Bank.
Joint teams for taking loans from the Agriculture Bank
Through the teams, farmer households are helped to take out loans from the Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development for developing agriculture production. To implement the policy of lending to every farmer household, the bank has to face some difficulties with numerous debtors and delinquent debtors. The bank has insufficient staff to provide and collect money from each farmer household. To implement the policy successfully, the bank needs more staff. However, profits from the difference between interest on loans and interest on deposits are not enough to pay bank officials. Furthermore, there is a lack of security in moving money to remote areas and along the main roads. Farm households, who prepare the forms themselves and come to the bank to take out a loan have to cope with many obstacles and use a lot of time. Lending teams have been established to meet this objective demand. The team leader prepares the loan documents and urges the households to repay punctually. Some team members provide guarantor status for members who might not be able to repay loans.
The members of a lending team urge one another to pay back punctually and help each other in case of difficulty. This is the basis of the bank's capacity to lend directly to each household. The lending team is the farmer organization to help procure the capital necessary for crop production.
Job teams
In some provinces, vocational associations or job groups have been established for horticulture, shrimp breeding and raft-fish farming, as well as for growing cane and cotton. These groups allow farmers to exchange experience, access new scientific technology, do business and discourage middlemen who depress agricultural produce prices. The professional associations are the foundation on which the specialized mass production will be built.
In Ho Chi Minh City, self help organizations have been established for households specializing in raising dairy cattle, cultivating bonsai and knitting. These groups are used to exchange techniques, breeds, seeds, materials and labour. Some teams shared capital and labour to build new infrastructure (electricity systems, drainage canals, roads, schools and various profession work place) have been established. Some joint teams comprising suppliers of input services, producers and middle buyers for consuming output (in raising dairy cows, raft-fishing, reforestation, and cooperative shops for supplying materials, agricultural products and other services) have also been established.
The scale, scope, contents and management of self help organizations in new forms varies considerably. In each model, there are various types of collaboration. Groups consisting of less than 10 households have a simple structure and a small scope of activities. However, they are very useful, distributing equally in mutual benefit to the farmers who highly appreciate them.
In the provinces of An Giang, Kien Giang, Can Tho, Vinh Long, Tra Vinh and Ho Chi Minh City, the formation of the self help organizations has become the great movement of the people. Local authorities at all levels have grasped peasant demands, and have approved, guided and helped them in a timely manner, as well as provide a legal basis for registering and acting in helpful ways to these organizations.
A survey of 15 hamlets and 44 self help teams in Tra Vinh Province, showed that most teams functioned according to their regulations and production plans.
In difficult regions with harsh conditions, at the first stage, the team concentrated on one or two types of production work. In areas with favourable conditions, most teams have managed three or four types of production work, or even five types such as production management, irrigation, plowing, pest management, production schedules and making loans for production. Some teams in Cuu Long precinct encouraged members to contribute capital to compensate the households whose land was lost due to digging drainage canals serving other members. Generally speaking, the features of self help organizations in the simple model of collaboration are crucial and common as shown by the demand for it in household economy in current period. These models have created favourable conditions for the household economy in overcoming obstacles to developing production of goods in a market mechanism. The features of self help organizations also include programmes of action in social organizations run by management authorities in rural areas. These have contributed positively to stabilize life, increase production, and promote the building of infrastructure, solidarity and friendship in rural areas. An advantage of this model is the simplicity of management, and low level of skill needed to meet the requirements of supplying the input needed for agriculture production.
Tay Ninh province, for example, has established 836 collaboration teams, providing electricity service with the participation of 27 036 households where teams have been formed on the basis residence and proximity. Members participated of their own free will and mutually helped supply the capital necessary to build the transmission lines and transformer-sub-station to transfer electricity to remote rural areas. This has made the face of rural areas happier. There are vocational associations in Tay Ninh such as the Village of Traditional Production of Tools for Agriculture, as well as some joint teams for signing and undertaking a reforestation subcontract under Government Project 327/CP.
In Ñong Nai Province the Union of Farmers cooperated with other organizations and enterprises to establish 5 020 subteams and job teams. These act as professional and self help groups for farmers in many areas, including helping to apply for loans, materials supply, distribute water, and harvest.
Specialized sericulture teams (Baøu haøm, Thoáng Nhaát precinct) are models of collaboration at each stage of production: cultivation, worm breeding, thread making and use of the final product. This is done by working closely with Sericulture Tan Loc Enterprises in production and marketing products. Eight cotton cultivation groups have been established in coordination with Ñong Nai Cotton Company in Long Khanh (Ñong Nai), Xuan Loc. Two typical groups are the Thu Thua Cotton Group in Long Khanh and the Xuan Bac Cotton Group.
These groups provide orientation to cotton production, agriculture extension, provision of bank loans, and they supply materials and management. Using an investment model with three parties - the bank, farmers and the cotton company - the company has successfully associated the bank loans closely to seed and materials supply. This model tries to consolidate cultivation groups. The 5th Group and the 22nd Group (Hiep Phuoc Village, Nhon Trach) have achieved the best agriculture extension. Their members pooled 4.5 million dong to purchase a harvesting machine and have used group funds to lend to poor households.
The model horticultural association which has been developed in Long Thanh, Vinh Cöu and Long Khanh has met the demand for self help in production, with farmers cultivating perennial industrial trees and fruit trees. Of these, seven horticulture associations in Long Khanh are functioning well' The Vinh Cöu Horticulture Association has upgraded and improved one hectare of gardens formerly of poor quality.
In the fishing industry, self help models have been developed in the form of small trusts to catch fish. In order to restore the breeding of fish, the fishermen have contributed 274 shares, at 250 000 dong per share. This small trust has brought back profits, divided share profits, achieved profit and contributed to the national budget. A 30-member team of fish breeders in Phu Thanh Village has 700 ha of water surface of which 200 ha are used for breeding. Through business, this small trust made a profit of 4-5 million dong. In addition, some other small trusts have been set up by farmers including such diverse groups as production teams for vegetables, mushrooms, coffee, poultry, dairy cattle, knitting, sewing and other professions.
Other models of economic self help at higher levels
In regions of newly reclaimed land such as Ñong Thap Muoi, the Long Xuyen quadrilateral zone, Bac Lieu, and Ca Mau Provinces, some models of economic self help devised by farmers have important features. Firstly, they contribute the capital to build new infrastructure creating favourable conditions for farmer households to work together to exploit efficiently the new land and other resources, expanding the new economic regions without government investment. This has created "public material entity" to develop the local economy and created new social foundations for all members to quickly stabilize their life, production and trading with great success. In these units, the strength is concentrated on improving the traffic system such as digging the canals, and building electric lines, as well as constructing small medical clinics, schools, and some working sites which serve people's livelihoods.
The capital contributed by farmers is used to improve the infrastructure. Therefore, in this case, the distribution mechanism of products and profits is not applied under the contribution rate but depends on the acreage of reclaimed land and on the amount of each household's capital contribution.
Each household is still an autonomous economic unit in its own acreage of land with its own capital and labour, but associated closely with the group. They abide by common plans, which are built on the common material bases such as traffic, irrigation, electric systems etc.
Some households, which cultivate in near by fields contribute capital to purchase pumping machines, essence, fuel oil to pump water into the rice fields, but they have not collaborated in the stages of plowing, sowing and harvesting in each crop.
There are many households contributing money to purchase plowing, harvesting and pumping machines for common use. This new form of cooperation has become more and more popular in recent years, particularly in An Giang Province, primarily, among relatives but gradually it is extending to other farmers. The formation of a capital and common material base in the self help units is the firm axiom of the birth of new model agriculture cooperatives under the Law on Cooperatives.
Although self help organizations have been established in many forms, up to now, there has been a shortage of direction by local authorities. In particular, the People's Committee of Village should be responsible for these organizations. Under the Civil Law, the self help unit is established on the basis of the people's will or social unions such as the Union of Farmers, the Union of Women, or the Union of Youth. They are responsible for building these self help organizations to assist in making loans, and providing production services but acting without contract and regulations, in a flexible relationship in time and space.
In the nature and principles of its organization and management, the self help organizations are similar to new model cooperatives, but their scale is smaller and their stability has not yet been confirmed in the long run. Therefore, new model cooperatives are legal entities but self help units are not. However, generally speaking, self help units will be developed so as to turn into new model cooperatives that will be more stable than those which are transferred from the old model cooperatives under the Law on Cooperatives. The People's Committee of the Village, the Union of Farmers and other agricultural extension organizations have the responsibility of assisting and directing Cooperatives to make contracts, and follow regulations and plans in action under the Civil Law. This way will create favourable conditions for them to exist and develop within the current legal frame.
A very important component of the struggle against famine (a concept clearer than poverty alleviation or food security) is increased agricultural production by small (and poor) farmers. To increase production, they need easy access to basic agricultural inputs and efficient agricultural services suitable to their specific situations and available in their fields.
Therefore, the technical problem to be solved has two aspects: organizing efficient agricultural support services and delivering them to the farmer's field or to his home, because a small farmer in general has no transport facilities and lives far from shops and the main roads.
For the solution of these very important problems, it is indispensable that the farmers (the primary actors of the development) be involved directly in the control of the process of change. A platform of local self help farmers' organization is indispensable for an efficient decentralization, and is indispensable to establish and strengthen institutional mechanisms aimed to be transformed in participatory rural development initiatives.
The project VIE95033 started with the clear objective of promoting an agricultural development "establishing agricultural support services, efficient, farmer demand driven and effectively reaching poor households". The ways needed for reaching this objective have been even more clarified during the progresses of the project until the achievement of a definite structure.
Background
The project began in early 1996 "to promote sustainable and equitable agricultural development in Viet Nam by establishing farmer demand driven (FDD) effective and efficient agricultural support services (AgSS), effectively reaching poor households at village and community level. These services will be appropriate to the conditions of an emergent market-oriented economy".
The objective implied a difficult accord between two conflicting items, because agricultural support services were supposed to be, on one hand, effective and efficient and on the other hand, farmer driven (FDD) and effectively reach poor households. The trends pull in different directions because they require skilled specialists in many fields of agriculture to entirely cover satisfactorily a large territory, reaching farmer poor households at community and village level. Considering that a Vietnamese district includes some 30 000 households, it is easy to understand that those objectives require an impossible number of specialists in various fields.
The project has been separated in three main sector objectives:
Objective 1: improve the provincial level capacity to plan, manage and monitor the delivery of FDD AgSS in the selected six provinces.ActivitiesObjective 2: strengthen capacity at district level to provide FDD input and output (i/o) agricultural extension services reaching farmer poor households at community and village level and appropriate to market oriented economy.
Objective 3: train for strengthening the capacity at farmer household and group level to enhance their access to i/o AgSS strengthening their integration within the market economy on a more equitable basis.
The main activities applied by the project for fulfilling its tasks are setting up a Provincial Core Team (PCT): a team of officials and experts to work on decentralized farmer led (DFL) participatory planning of AgSS; setting up a monitoring unit, activating in two districts of each of the six selected provinces of an information management system, a system of computers equipped with modems and printers for providing the district DFL extension services with all the information for integrating them in a market oriented economy, extension workers in the Pilot Action Areas (PAA) trained in participatory FDD. The 1998 workplan foresaw contributions of $30,000 to start farmer groups in the twelve PAAs.
Results
Project activities at small farmer and poor household level have not been completely realized due to a variety of reasons: appropriating contributions to help start farmer groups, without appropriate follow-up from project staff, has been detrimental because: the training courses were aimed at readying fundable activities rather than training farmers capacity to access i/o agricultural support services; field activities following training course completion in early 1998 were suspended while awaiting funds. It should have been clear that VIE95033 was a training project and that those small contributions should have been only a help to speed the start of activities; the execution of activities in the PAAs, from the Mekong delta to the border with China, have been entrusted completely to the Provincial Project Directors (PPD) and to the PCTs.
However, as PPD were not full time, their project duties competed with other official tasks. As PCTs had no clear, stable and codified instructions and tasks, rarely met and continuously changed their organization and roles, they were a useless complication to project activities. The extension workers, not yet a poli-functional agricultural extension service, without a common background and without a clear understanding of the project objectives, have limited their activity to technical transfer, disregarding the promotional aspect of their task. The information management system was limited to the installation of twelve computers equipped with modems and printers. The indispensable connection between those computers - the project computer network and some external network to provide district DFL extension services with information to integrate them into a market-oriented economy - are still missing.
Conclusions
The results suggest that: a team of experts at local level (provincial level, district level) can be useful if the composition of the team is clear, motivated and technically logical, the experts meet at definite intervals, reporting discussions and preparing an agenda for the next meeting, the experts cover related matters, and use a participatory approach, with much involvement of the rural populations. local level national project officials responsible for project activities can be useful if they work full time on the project, dismissing other official tasks until the project completion; in using modern technology (computer networks) it is necessary that: the technical level is not advanced too far beyond the normal national technical level, connections between the network and the small farmer are effective and efficient, and the project must foresee the indispensable means for the agricultural support services to effectively and efficiently reach poor households at village and community level.
Proposed solutions and recommendations
Approaching the natural end of the project, it is possible, right and proper to make a very first balance of the results, bringing out the positive achievements and the possible lacks in the results. A possible and practicable trend that the project lacks is proposing, testing and separating the two functions: organizing a system offers effective and efficient agricultural support services, giving the extension service the task and the means for bringing its services to all farmers.
The solution could be pursued reorganizing the existing extension services so that they could assume more important tasks in addition to the traditional technical transfer. This re-organization and this new division of tasks aims: to have a very specialized Agricultural Support Services System. Some services could remain in the provinces, using in this way a limited number of high quality experts, and in the meantime, to have an Extension Service connecting, in a participating way, as many households as possible with the Agricultural Support Services System.
Agricultural extension must be poli-functional. It must resume four important tasks: bringing Agricultural Support Services to all farmers, managing the connection between who needs services and who offers them; divulging directly basic technical knowledge; encouraging development of farmers groups and of any other possible organizations, in accordance with the New Cooperative Law; connecting in both directions the Agricultural Support Services System with rural farmers (otherwise the agricultural service offers services that farmers do not know and do not use).
The expected outputs were: development and field testing of a locally adapted farmers training field manual on specifically on self help capacity building, enhancing their access to related AgSS input and output services, and farmers field training activities on market oriented FDD AgSS i/o services by district level agricultural extension workers.
