Vietnam: High demand in training of high-tech agriculture
The national plan to develop human resources in the 2011-20 period has targeted increasing trained employees in the agriculture and forestry sectors to 50 per cent by 2020 from 15.5 per cent in 2010. Under the plan, the industry would face a shortage of 3.2 million trained laborers.
According to Nguyen Do Anh Tuan, Director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD) the agricultural sector had few workers with training and had mainly depended on laborers’ experience and low standards for laborers have had a negative impact on their capacity to approach advanced science and technologies. That issue will be a great obstacle in implementation of the country’s high tech agriculture development.
One of the reasons of labor low quality is education and vocational training system, which is out of date and can’t meet demand for training workers, both in terms of quality and quantity. Agricultural education in Vietnam focuses mostly on theory and not practice in the field or on the farm. There are graduates but they have limited practical working skills and lack of creativity.
Vietnam is facing a shortage of educated human resources to meet the demand of high-tech agriculture at a time of the 4.0 industrial revolution. Priority therefore should be given to the education at all levels from academic to vocational training. The Government should also encourage organisations, companies and individuals to set up vocational training centres and hold training programmes in areas using high-tech agriculture.
Nguyen Van Tien, Head of the rural agricultural department under the Central Economic Committee, said that more money from the budget should be allocated to training in high-tech agriculture.
These investments must focus on training professionals and skilled experts in the fields of bio-technology, new-material technology and management science, he said.
Source: Vietnam News Agency / www.agroberichtenbuitenland.nl