Вьетнам превратил сельское хозяйство в экспортный хаб благодаря научному подходу и частному капиталу

A FRIEND of mine recently visited Vietnam to benchmark how the rice industry had progressed there, and what he witnessed overwhelmed him. He observed that five years ago, when he last traveled to the place, only a few rice warehouses could be found along the Mekong. Now, at one stretch, warehouses were operating on both sides of the river. He further noticed that the company he visited five years ago had tripled its facility and added more warehouses and multiple loading docks. There were also more drying facilities and huge grain silos, 10 in one compound alone. He is thus no longer surprised why Vietnam can easily export cheaper quality rice to the Philippines, which will have a hard time competing in terms of both price and quality. Another friend who is on holiday in Vietnam messaged me that she was surprised that they were now producing macadamia nuts, a product made popular by Hawaii farmers. She observed that Vietnam’s produce was sweeter (and hence, better) than the Hawaiian variety. She added that they even invented a small metal gadget that could easily open the hard shell. I remember that in the 1990s and early 2000s, when I was still active in the teaching and research profession at UP Los Baños (UPLB), reputed to be our premier institution of learning for agriculture and forestry, it was commonplace to encounter Vietnamese students enrolled in numerous fields of agricultural specialization. Even in agricultural economics, there were quite a number of Vietnamese wanting to learn how the capitalist market operated in agriculture. Following the example of China, the Vietnamese government was then exploring the possibility of adopting more market-oriented reforms to extricate and revive its economy from the rigidity and inefficiency of socialist planning. The dogged determination of Vietnam’s leaders to pursue real reforms paid off handsomely, thanks to the wisdom shared by UPLB. In contrast, despite the president reciting a litany of positive developments in our agriculture sector during his State of the Nation Address (SONA), the reality during the last four years renders a different and sad story. In 2022, agriculture grew by a measly 0.6 percent. In 2023, it was 1.2 percent; in 2024, it recorded negative growth of 2.2 percent and in 2025 it rebounded to 2.6 percent. That seems to be impressive but note that the base year (2024) was negative. This had the effect of raising the 2025 result. Aggregating agriculture’s growth during the last four years, it averaged only 0.55 percent. Clearly, this is lower than our population growth, which in 2025 was projected to be around 0.81 percent, down from 1.63 percent a few years ago. It is therefore no surprise that our agriculture sector cannot adequately meet the food requirements of our people. Moreover, low farm productivity resulting in the inadequate supply of practically most food commodities has immensely contributed to high inflation, particularly food inflation. Not surprisingly, the results of the top three public opinion poll surveys consistently show that inflation is the foremost concern of Filipinos, registering at more than 70 percent of respondents. Yet this issue was hardly addressed in the SONA. Back to the Vietnamese case, it is undeniable that strong and visionary leadership served as the key factor in the successful transformation of their agriculture into a modern and efficient sector. Top leadership ensured that institutions involved in promoting agricultural transformation were led by highly qualified individuals, quite a number of them trained at UPLB. With strong institutions manned by high-caliber officials, Vietnam was able to formulate science-based policies that resulted in jumpstarting the agricultural development process. Populist demagoguery and ideology were shunned in favor of science-based analysis of empirical evidence derived from local and international experiences. Vietnam embraced agricultural trade liberalization by actively lobbying to become a member of the World Trade Organization so that it could easily access the global market when the country became an agri-export powerhouse. The latter was achieved by systematically providing small farmers with the necessary support to make them efficient and competitive, including investments in research and development that passed on new knowledge and technologies. In short, the whole set of investments was geared towards supporting trade liberalization and the many challenges and opportunities it posed to Vietnam’s agriculture. In addition, agricultural production activities were planned based on the comparative advantage of the region or locality. Areas near the Mekong were designated for rice cultivation, interspersed with vegetable production in between the two palay planting seasons. The highlands were devoted to coffee production and other orchards that did not require enormous amounts of water. The corn tariff was lowered to almost zero to support the livestock and poultry industry as corn is an important feed ingredient. Vietnam focused on the production of high-value commodities such as pork and chicken instead of making humongous investments to produce a low-value commodity like corn. Moreover, Vietnam consolidated the lands of small farmers to enjoy economies of scale. Having achieved this, it encouraged the private sector to invest in agriculture. The role of the small farmers in this agro-industrial hub is mostly confined to production. They are assured of a fair price for their produce by the private sector investor, who also provides the logistics, processing, marketing and financial services. There is no failure of governance in Vietnam’s agriculture because the state plays a neutral role. The state’s main function is to “level the playing field” among competing entrepreneurs. This is possible because the state functionaries are not directly engaged in agricultural businesses. Their main function is to administer good governance while private sector players are assigned the task of creating or generating as much wealth as they can using their entrepreneurial skills. The situation in Vietnam is a quintessential feature of competitive capitalism. The realm of politics (governance) is separated from the domain of economics (market). Only under a feudal system do the barriers become murky, resulting in backwardness or underdevelopment as the economy stagnates because of the absence of competition. The current state of our agricultural sector is a classic case of feudal — and failed — governance.