Youth participants is key for a sustainable future in Vietnam’s agriculture
With 3 generations of coffee farmers in the family, 33-year-old Hoan from Minh Toan Loi Cooperative is expected to take the legacy of the older generations and lead the family get out of difficulties due to the dramatic decline in coffee productivity. When the elders have been wondering for the reason of coffee deterioration, Hoan believes that the usage of large amount of chemical fertilizer has deteriorate the soil. Hoan is the leader of a youth group that participated in the Youth Kick-Off Workshop for clients of Agriterra in 2021.
The knowledge from the workshop and the practical experience from the exchange with coffee farmers in Zanya Coffee in Lac Duong district, Lam Dong province has broadened Hoan’s way of thinking about coffee cultivation. Coffee farmers need to nurture the soil when cultivating their coffee, not only concentrate on their coffee productivity. After the trip, Hoan piloted composting from coffee husks which help to reduce his family's cost of fertilizer. He belongs to the youth leaders in the agriculture cooperative in Vietnam, which accounted for around 15% of cooperative leaders in Vietnam. The question is where is the rest 85 % of youth?
Impacts in the agricultural sector
The movement of labor from rural to urban areas during the urbanization process brings changes in agricultural form, type, and pattern in rural areas is one of those impacts. When the youth move the urban areas, the aging people are left with their farms leading to a change in population structure. Environmental degradation, climate change, and limited agricultural technology tend to affect older farmers more than their younger counterparts. When more youngsters move to the city, the agriculture sector is under threaten.
Agriculture is considered a low social status and low-income job in Vietnam. Along with economic development, youth mobilization is increasing. More and more youth move to the city to study, to work, and to reside there. In addition, climate change has a negative impact on the agriculture sector which make the sector even more unstable for youth. Most of them have been growing in the immense rice fields but only a minority of them decide to stay in their hometown. The low productivity of agriculture. The unstable income. The fluctuated market price. The unpredictable weather even makes their life harder.
Include youth in decision making
Youth participants is key to a sustainable future for agriculture and cooperatives according to Agriterra. If the cooperative wants to safeguard its achievements from the past and be able to respond to unpredictable changes in the fast-moving world, investment in the farmers of the future is key. The reality is that youngsters often have a low level of involvement in the decision-making process of farmer’s cooperatives and organizations due to their inexperience and the limited decentralization in the culture of Vietnam, youth face difficulties in accessing various kinds of resources such as: lack of access to finance, lack of access to land, lack of knowledge and technical skill, and they also have a bad image of the agriculture sector (low income, low social status, hard job, etc.)
Despite such difficulties, Agriterra keeps working with youth because on average, youths have more energy, fresh ideas, and different knowledge (e.g., about new technology and social media) and they know how to reach out to their young fellows. By involving young people, they believe that it is important that these are in line with the youth’s perceptions and way of working. That is a key factor in making youth involvement successful. That’s the way we create and build up the future generations of agricultural cooperatives in Vietnam. Youth today is the seniors’ farmers tomorrow, while facilitate youth participation, we build the way for a better succession plan owned by youth.
Eco friendly production
Hoan, without the pressure from his family, might leave Daklak for Da Nang for a better job opportunity. He and some other brave youngsters who still do farming with their family is the minority. However, those minorities could only make a change with a strong motivation to change their life, their family life, and the life of the farmers around them. Easier said than done, during the composting pilot, Hoan had been struggling with himself, his family, and the cooperative fellow members. ” What if the composting is unsuccessful? What if the coffee tree dies? How can my family survive for the next season? “This kind of question was on Hoan’s mind before he made the decision “ If not me, then who?” “Zanya coffee could do it, then why not me?”. With strong determination, knowledge from the exchange, and self-study via youtube, Hoan piloted successful 2 ha of organic coffee, and later other youth members joined him in this chain of success. Shifting from the traditional practices of chemical-based agriculture to an eco- friendlier method is a big step in coffee production in his cooperative.
Making a difference
Several years later, Hoan greeted us in his coffee farm with his authentic charming smile. He shared that some 80% of the cooperative’s members have followed to make their own compost from coffee husk. The areas with the application of coffee husk compost showed an increase in microorganisms and an improvement in the fertility of the soil with plots that did not use the compost. As a result, the coffee tree and coffee leaf are healthy, and their production areas have gone up from 250 ha to 300 ha of coffee with the same number of members. The composting task was put in the cooperative’s annual work plan in 2022. Hoan started to share his knowledge via facebook and youtube.
In conclusion, an organization, to become and stay relevant, needs to have a strategy to recruit and train a new generation of leaders and members. Young people bring new ideas, new networks, and new ways of working that can strengthen themselves and those surrounding. However, youth participation is not a fast activity in between, but part of a process and policy towards youth participation. Youth participation is not a goal, but an indispensable part of any organization’s succession plan.
For more information on Agriterra:
Agriterra website: https://www.agriterra.org/
Agriterra Vietnam: https://linktr.ee/agriterravn
The vital role of youth in cooperatives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8NZF78aJes