Strengthening agricultural cooperatives in Viet Nam

Agriculture is one of the mainstays of the Vietnamese economy employing nearly half of the workforce and accounting for 17 per cent of GDP. However agricultural value chains often do not effectively integrate small-scale farmers and their produce. Cooperatives provide an opportunity for these small-scale farmers to improve their productivity, add value to their produce, and increase their access to national and international markets.

There are around 20,000 formally registered agricultural cooperatives with more than 13.5 million members. In order to improve their performance and serve their members better these cooperatives need to overcome a set of challenges including limited market access, excessive regulations, underdeveloped infrastructure, and climate change, in addition to internal challenges related to governance and management.

To improve the management capacities of agricultural cooperatives, ILO, Agriterra and the Viet Nam Cooperative Alliance (VCA) have adapted the “My.Coop - Managing your agricultural cooperative” training package into the Vietnamese context and language. My.Coop aims to enable managers of agricultural cooperatives to identify and address major management challenges that are specific to cooperatives in market oriented agricultural development. The adaptation of My.Coop follows the signing of memorandum of understanding between the ILO and the VCA in May 2016 for effective formulation and implementation of local strategies for promoting sustainable business development.

In February 2017, a five-day Training of Trainers (ToT) on My.Coop was organized in Hanoi with 22 participants from farmers’ organizations, the VCA, vocational training institutions, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and provincial cooperative support organizations. The training programme provided the participants with knowledge that can facilitate cooperative managers in sound decision-making on common services, such as supply of farm inputs and marketing.

“My.Coop is not only providing us new knowledge in cooperative management but also equipping us with a number of interesting training methodologies”, said Mr Huynh Lam Phuong, Principle of vocational training school for cooperative staff in Southern Viet Nam.

Mr Tran Dinh Tuan, Deputy Director of the Department of International Relations of VCA stated how “My.Coop package is quite useful for managers of Vietnamese agricultural cooperatives, particularly in supporting them to overcome their governance challenges. VCA will introduce My.Coop to different organizations which are supporting cooperatives. It will also roll out the training programme to all the cooperatives which are the members of our alliance”.

See Also

My.Coop - Managing your agriculture cooperative