Agricultural Vocational Training: Challenges

Agricultural training courses are organized in the province to help people grasp the intensive production process; proactively introduce crop varieties with high economic efficiency into production.

Improve farmer knowledge

Agricultural vocational training is one of the contents in vocational training for rural workers in Thai Nguyen. Being directly decentralized to districts and cities in the province, in recent times, agricultural vocational training has been proactively selected by localities to train suitable occupations to meet the needs of the people.

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Nam, Head of the Department of Economic Cooperation and Rural Development: The main trained occupations are safe vegetable production techniques, rice-corn cultivation, tea production, veterinary husbandry, etc.

Through agricultural training courses, people learn techniques in animal husbandry and cultivation, thereby creating products with high productivity, quality, ensuring food safety and higher selling prices. Ms. Vu Thi Tho, in Hamlet 7, Binh Thuan Commune (Dai Tu) said: Each class only lasts for 3 months. Class hours are arranged by lecturers so that students can do their family and farm work well and still have time to fully participate in class sessions. During the learning process, we "broke out" many things.

Up to now, we have boldly introduced high-quality purebred rice varieties and hybrid rice varieties to replace Khang Dan rice varieties that have shown signs of degeneration and degradation; actively planted late spring rice to avoid the cold, and early season rice to produce winter crops in time. Especially, we have used the right types and dosages of pesticides to spray to prevent pests and diseases on rice, vegetables, and tea, with priority given to biological pesticides containing active ingredients of natural origin... - Ms. Vu Thi Tho

According to Ms. Do Thi Hoa, Song Cau town (Dong Hy), participating in the training course on tea production and processing techniques helps farmers boldly produce tea in an organic direction, both protecting the sustainable development of tea trees and creating safe products to meet market demand...

Also from participating in training courses on livestock and veterinary techniques, Mr. Nguyen Kim Xua, Co 1 residential group, Giang Tien town (Phu Luong), has grasped knowledge on disease prevention and control for chickens; applying science and technology to livestock farming brings high economic efficiency.

Mr. Xua said: I started raising white-feathered chickens on a farm scale (40,000 chickens/year) in 2003. Diseases were the biggest threat, so when I first started raising chickens and had no experience, I lost everything because my chickens were infected with H5N1 flu. After that, I attended many training courses on animal husbandry and veterinary medicine, so I knew how to proactively prevent and control diseases for livestock. From that initial failure, after more than 20 years, my family's farm has achieved increasingly better results with an income of about 1 billion VND/year.

Difficulties arise

In the 4.0 era, Thai Nguyen's agriculture is moving towards specialized commodity production, high-tech agriculture, and large scale. Therefore, improving the production level for farmers to meet the requirements is very necessary. However, currently, the number of rural workers in the province who have not been trained in agriculture is up to about 90%.

Meanwhile, the number of people in rural areas of the province receiving agricultural training is on a sharp decline. Previously, Thai Nguyen trained about 1,200 people in agriculture each year. However, in 2024, the results of agricultural training only reached 46.05% of the assigned plan.

Many households in Thai Nguyen have accessed advanced science and technology, applied it to circular farming, helping to improve economic efficiency and protect the environment.

This is the reason why farmers' ability to apply new scientific and technical advances in production is still limited. According to Mr. Le Dac Vinh, Head of the Department of Animal Husbandry, Veterinary and Aquatic Products of the province, in addition to workers working at more than 1,250 farms in the province who are trained in basic knowledge of animal care and disease prevention techniques, the rest are mostly manual workers. In particular, in households, knowledge of animal husbandry and veterinary medicine is still very limited.

Most agricultural workers, especially in mountainous and highland areas of the province, have low qualifications. In the process of agricultural vocational training, lecturers need to combine both theory and practice. However, due to many vocational training courses being held locally and limited infrastructure, the practice phase has not been implemented effectively. In training courses, students mostly practice by visiting and learning from real production models, without directly participating in production, so the training effectiveness is not high.

Commenting on the reason why the rate of people receiving agricultural vocational training has not yet met the plan, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Nam said: Because some localities are not considered poor districts according to Decision No. 90/QD-TTg dated January 18, 2022 of the Prime Minister, farmers are not trained in vocational training under the funding source of the National Target Program for Sustainable Poverty Reduction. Moreover, the number of people in need of vocational training in the 2021-2025 period has decreased sharply compared to the 2016-2020 period due to young workers going to work at companies and enterprises.

Along with that, the technical and economic norms for agricultural occupations have not been issued much, so there has not been any participation of non-public training institutions through the form of ordering. That is not to mention the situation where vocational training institutions participating in training are mainly vocational schools, vocational education centers, and continuing education centers assigned the task. Vocational training institutions such as centers, companies, and enterprises have not participated because the province has not issued technical and economic norms and training prices to place orders according to regulations. - Mr. Nguyen Thanh Nam

To solve the above difficulties, Thai Nguyen should continue to pay more attention to propaganda, vocational training and employment counseling for rural workers. Along with that, develop specialized areas in agricultural production to organize commodity production associated with vocational training. At the same time, functional agencies and localities continue to coordinate to investigate and survey the demand for vocational training, use of rural labor and the capacity of training facilities. From there, develop a plan suitable to the actual situation in the province, meeting the needs of workers; integrate programs and projects, mobilize funding sources to effectively implement agricultural vocational training for rural workers...

Source: https://baothainguyen.vn/xa-hoi/202505/dao-tao-nghe-nong-nghiep-nhung-thach-thuc-dat-ra-383013a/