View of the workshop

 
Giving speech at the workshop, according to Ms. Nguyen Thi Viet Ha - Deputy Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Farmers’ Union (VNFU), Deputy Director of the FFF II Program said: The link in production and business is always the direction which is being encouraged by many countries around the world. For Vietnam's agro-forestry industry, due to small-scale, fragmented, and traditional production, therefore, cooperation and association has become more necessary than ever.

 
Notably, in the past years, our Party and State have affirmed that the linkage of 6 houses, including: Farmers - State - Scientists - Entrepreneurs - Banks - Distributors is very important. And to do this requires the involvement of the whole political system.

 
“In this connection, with our experience, the "farmer" association - that is, the link between farmer households, collective groups, and cooperatives is the most important. Therefore, this is also one of the key tasks of the Vietnam Farmers’ Union as well as the FFF Vietnam Program that has been trying to implement in recent years” - Deputy Director of the FFF II Program Nguyen Thi Viet Ha strongly emphasized.

 
The report on the implementation of the FFF phase II of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) showed that the program has achieved many remarkable results. Mechanisms and policies related to FFPOs are promoted more favorably through roundtable discussion and multi-sectoral meeting.


In addition, the business ability, market and finance access of FFPO have been increased through value chains associated with gender equality and service provision for members. For FFPOs, they gradually understand the benefits of teamwork, cooperation, members contribute capital to invest in business, processing to increase value.

 
At the same time, the capacity and skills of the Farmers’ Union staff at all levels have been gradually improved. From there, they are providing better services to FFPOs as well as members and farmers. Especially the attention and support from the local government and related departments and agencies, on that basis, they cooperate more closely. They have many opportunities to work with the Farmers' Union at the same level and farmers to listen to the voice directly from members, farmers, etc.


However, besides the achieved results, FFPOs also face many difficulties when accessing the market. Partly because the production scale is not large enough. In addition, the production capacity is still limited, etc.


The workshop also raised a number of specific objectives such as: First, sharing experiences and lessons learned in the implementation of the FFF II Program and supporting FFPOs in production and business, market connection, application of sustainable forest management standards, long timber rotation, organic production, adaptation to climate change.


Second, build a network of FFPOs, strengthen the exchange of experience, knowledge, market information, develop timber and non-timber forest products, strengthen adaptability and resilience to climate change.


Third, raise awareness for VNFU officials at all levels and leaders of FFPOs about policies, resources and measures to develop sustainable forest and farm production and business responding to climate change, increase the participation of women, ethnic minorities and gender equality.


At the workshop, the participants shared about the achieved results and lessons learned during the implementation of FFF II in the provinces. At the same time, they actively discussed and shared experiences on the operation of FFPOs in production and business, sustainable forest farm management; also proposed ideas to build a network of forest and farm household groups, collective groups, cooperatives, etc.


On this occasion, the participants had chance to visit and exchange experiences in the development model of large timber forests, organic agriculture, and agroforestry at Tan Dong and Tan Lac Son cooperatives in the Tan Lac district, Hoa Binh province; visited model of community tourism village.