Agricultural development associated with digital transformation

Agricultural production development associated with digital transformation is an activity to enhance the benefits of value chain participants, especially farmers. With that the meaning, over time, Pho Yen City has actively built agricultural production models and projects associated with digital transformation, then replicating them in the area.

To implement this content, the city has directed specialized units to actively select and build production development models and projects associated with digital transformation. The projects and models are implemented based on the results of carefully studying the conditions of each locality, assessing the feasibility, selecting the appropriate models and projects for implementation to ensure the success of the models and projects.

Determining the success of the model and the project plays an important role for the cooperative, the cooperative group and the members of the management board, therefore, Pho Yen City has stepped up training and education for these subjects. Accordingly, the City has organized 3 training courses and seminars for nearly 200 participants on attaching planting area codes to concentrated fruit production areas, tea production areas and applying weather monitoring technology to support agricultural production in the area. In addition, localities also actively propagate, train and improve knowledge for people to improve their farming and product production skills.

For example, the project "Associating planting and processing products from Ming Aralia in the value chain associated with product consumption in the area" has been implemented by Hoa Trung Service Cooperative since 2020. Currently, the model has 15ha of Ming Aralia, with the participation of 35 households in the following localities: Minh Duc, Phuc Thuan, and Thanh Cong. The farming households participating in the project, are not only trained in techniques of planting, care and harvesting, but also guided to produce products from this plant. Currently, Hoa Trung Service Cooperative is producing 2 main products: Ming Aralia tea and Ming Aralia extract. Products of the cooperative are being sold in the markets of the following provinces: Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, and Ho Chi Minh City. In addition, the cooperative is also operating the application of digital technology in some stages of production and processing to improve the efficiency of the project, reduce laborers and increase product value.

In 2020, Pho Yen town has implemented 4 projects to apply digital transformation to agricultural production, including: "Support for the development and expansion of safe vegetable production areas of Dong Cao agricultural service cooperative"; “Flower production link”; “Associating high-tech application production, product preservation and consumption for concentrated fruit areas in Phuc Thuan commune” “Producing  high quality pure rice according to VietGAP standards in Duong hamlet, Dac Son commune ". These projects have been effective.

In addition, responding to the program "Growing 1 billion trees in the period 2021-2025" launched by the Prime Minister, the Economic Department of Pho Yen City has coordinated with VNPT Thai Nguyen to install and use the green tree management software “Thai Nguyen SmartTrees”. Up to now, this application has completed the function and is working well. The application has many features such as: Update and edit tree information, get coordinates and tree images at the scene, support to quickly search a large number of trees with just one operation; lookup, quick search, advanced search; scan QR code to retrieve tree information…

Each newly planted tree is updated and has a separate QR code to monitor and track the growth, development, and relocation. In particular, through the SmartTrees application, when people detect problems related to trees, they can send reflected information and images for the authorities to receive and handle. As of June 2022, the city has updated the tree management data on Thai Nguyen SmartTrees software with 52,300 trees.

Up to now, in Pho Yen City has built 10 production models and projects associated with digital transformation, including 7 models and projects in the field of crop production, 1 livestock model and 1 application of science and technology in agricultural production, 1 model in the field of forestry. The models and projects have all confirmed their effectiveness in increasing the scale of production of goods, creating favorable conditions to apply modern production processes such as: Production according to VietGAP standards, in an organic direction, attaching the planting area code. In addition, the activities of the models and projects have also improved the capacity of management, administration and organization of production according to market demand, associated with the consumption of output products to help increase income for farmers.