Improving the capacity of agricultural cooperatives

(Baothanhhoa.vn) - In recent years, agricultural cooperatives in the province have focused on organizing and providing support services for production, processing, and consumption of agricultural products to improve production efficiency, business, and income for members. However, in order for agricultural cooperatives to promote their strength as key units, contributing to the development of the rural economy, the issue of comprehensive capacity improvement for cooperatives is a difficult problem, requiring joint efforts to find a solution.

High-tech agricultural production area of ​​Ca To Agricultural Service Cooperative, Nguyet Vien Ward.

Thanh Hoa province currently has 1,373 cooperatives, including 870 agricultural cooperatives. Through practical surveys, it is shown that many cooperatives have paid attention to developing more members and mobilizing more capital to invest in improving capacity, developing business, and doing well in service stages, such as: building and renovating greenhouses, hydroponic houses, investing in combine harvesters, tillers, transplanters, upgrading water pumping stations, repairing and renewing intra-field canals. At the same time, developing more agricultural services, producing safe vegetables, supplying agricultural materials, and environmental sanitation. Along with that, cooperatives continue to maintain and sign contracts with enterprises to purchase and consume agricultural products, promote the application of science and technology in agricultural production, access digital technology, etc., contributing to improving production and business efficiency.

Visiting Ca To Agricultural Service Cooperative, Nguyet Vien Ward, we saw the importance of improving knowledge as well as considering knowledge as the "key" to open the door to success of the Cooperative in economic development for its members. Established in 2016, it has chosen to develop high-tech agriculture as the foundation for development. Accordingly, in parallel with accumulating land to develop large-scale production and applying high technology, the Cooperative has proactively linked to learning, improving production skills, thereby transferring and training members. Ms. Le Thi Hong Duyen, Director of Ca To Agricultural Service Cooperative, said: “In addition to improving production skills, the Cooperative also proactively researches and consults effective production models for testing and application in practice. Accordingly, we see that developing organic production combined with experiential agricultural tourism is popular in the market. Therefore, since 2022, the Cooperative has imported Korean grape varieties and strawberries for planting, both improving production efficiency and gradually building an experiential agricultural tourism model. Up to now, the Cooperative has built a "brand" in the field of agricultural tourism, becoming a destination for sightseeing and learning for people and many schools in and outside the province."

It is known that Ca To Agricultural Service Cooperative has accumulated and concentrated more than 2 hectares of land and invested more than 6 billion VND to build a closed high-tech agricultural model, build a river-in-pond model to raise high-yield fish, build 10,000m2 of greenhouses and net houses to grow safe vegetables, tubers and fruits... With a suitable production development direction, the annual revenue of the cooperative reaches more than 3 billion VND, creating stable jobs for members and 7 workers.

At many conferences on promoting the development of collective economy and cooperatives, experts have affirmed that new-style cooperatives must have 5 criteria: New awareness, new knowledge, new consciousness, new determination and high income. Therefore, with the goal of becoming new-style cooperatives, many cooperatives in the province have focused on improving production levels and promoting the trend of linking production and product consumption according to the value chain. Mr. Bui Xuan Hong, Director of Nga Truong Agricultural Service Cooperative, Ba Dinh Commune, said: To affirm innovation, in parallel with improving the qualifications of managers and cooperative members, we also build comprehensive and transparent agricultural value chains to enhance the competitiveness of products in the market. At the same time, it is the basis for focusing on investing in international quality certification, building a separate brand for the cooperative's production area. Thereby improving production efficiency, business and income for workers".

To support cooperatives in increasing internal resources for cooperatives, Thanh Hoa province has issued many policies to support collective economy and cooperatives such as: Policies on training and fostering human resources; policies on trade promotion and market expansion; policies to support pilot models of sending young university graduates to work for a limited period of time at agricultural cooperatives; building production models associated with value chains... contributing to improving production efficiency, income, and creating many jobs for members, member households and people in the area.

Aiming to improve the capacity of cooperatives, especially agricultural cooperatives, Chairman of the Provincial Cooperative Union Nguyen Dinh Tuan said: "In recent years, the training and fostering of cooperative management staff has been identified by the Provincial Cooperative Union as an important task to equip key cooperative staff with new knowledge, fully absorb and understand more deeply the new policies on collective economic development, cooperatives of the Party and the State as well as the province. In addition to studying and acquiring knowledge in class, students also participate in extracurricular activities, exchange experiences, visit and study at typical cooperative models in and outside the province, thereby contributing to helping students improve their management capacity and production and business efficiency of cooperatives".

Article and photos: Le Hoa

Source: https://baothanhhoa.vn/cai-thien-nang-luc-cua-cac-htx-nong-nghiep-260489.htm