Awakening Tra Lan region

(Baonghean) - There have been bright spots in the construction of new rural areas and socio-economic development, but the overall picture of Con Cuong is still a poor mountainous district with more than 1/3 of households being poor. Con Cuong needs to have an economic breakthrough based on its potential and advantages. That was also the issue pointed out during the working trip of Provincial Party Secretary Ho Duc Phoc to Con Cuong district at the end of May.

In the flow of time, Con Cuong land was "chosen" by history to become a place to witness and record heroic feats in the nation's struggle to defend the country. The heroic past is both the foundation and motivation for generations of Con Cuong people today to promote their potential and advantages to strive to build their homeland out of poverty and rise up to become rich and strong. And in reality, Con Cuong is making very positive progress in many fields, improving people's lives thanks to partly exploiting the potential and advantages of the locality.

For example, in To village, Yen Khe commune, where 143 households with 623 people live, I had the opportunity to visit with the working delegation of the Provincial Party Secretary. The production land area of ​​the village is only 58 hectares, including 13 hectares of rice, 36 hectares of tea and some areas of vegetable cultivation. For a long time, partly due to climatic conditions but also due to production habits and the mentality of waiting and relying on a part of the people, the villagers still did not know how to awaken the potential of the land, and life faced many difficulties. According to the village's statistics, in 2010, the number of poor households accounted for 55% of the households. Implementing the New Rural Development Program, the village Party cell held a meeting and issued a thematic resolution to select 4 out of 19 criteria to focus on directing first, with the immediate priority being economic development.

Comrade Luong Dinh Kieu - Secretary of To village Party Cell shared with the Provincial Party Secretary and the working delegation: "We determined that to fight the "enemy" of poverty, we must fight the "enemy" of waiting and relying on people in the consciousness of each person. Therefore, cadres and party members must be pioneers, exemplary in implementing and mobilizing people to focus on intensive farming and improving crop productivity. The advantage of the village is that 21/28 party members in the cell are cadres of various sectors living in their residence, so when necessary, they can exchange and learn production experiences from these party members." With the above participation, the people of To village have proactively applied science and technology to intensive farming, with significantly increased efficiency. The evidence is that from 2010 to now, the economic growth rate of the village has continuously reached 12-15% per year. The average income per person has also reached 830 thousand VND per month. As a result, the poverty rate dropped to 25.3%, while the rate of well-off households increased rapidly.

Economic development and increased income of people also create a very good premise for implementing other criteria in building new rural areas, the most prominent in recent times is the construction of rural roads. Reporting to the Provincial Party Secretary, the Party Secretary of To village could not hide his pride when affirming: This is a "local revolution". Because when mobilizing people to donate land, architectural works, trees to widen the road, many people said: "Our land already has a title, when we take it, we must compensate". Or when mobilizing each person to contribute 155 thousand VND to buy materials, the Village Management Board also received many disagreeing opinions, such as: "We have been using these roads for more than half of our lives, what is the point of them? Now we can drive like this, why do we need to build concrete roads". At that time, the entire political system of the village had to get involved, in particular, the Front Committee assigned each team and group to directly go to any household that still had problems to mobilize, and the families of exemplary party members set an example for the people to follow. With the motto of "telling so that the people understand, doing so that the people see", the people in the village finally agreed and responded highly. "In addition to 400 tons of cement supported by the State, the people of the village contributed 950 million VND, 2,000 working days to build the road, not to mention the people donated over 3,000 square meters of land, hundreds of fruit trees, wood and 60 meters of fence. Thanks to that, in just a short time, the village has built 2.2 km of internal traffic roads that meet the new rural standards" - Comrade Kieu excitedly added.

Building rural roads in Lang Khe commune (Con Cuong). Photo: Phung Van Mui

After hearing the above information, Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee Ho Duc Phoc was very pleased with the constant innovation of To village. However, talking intimately with cadres, party members and people of To village, Comrade Ho Duc Phoc was also very concerned that the village still had up to 60 workers who had to go to work far away. “Commune and village leaders must study and consider how to develop production from their homeland. We must build economic models based on land potential to create jobs and income; children will not have to go to work far away. If the commune or village is in difficulty, the district and province will support seeds, production processes and services” - the Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee confidently assigned the task.

Also in Yen Khe, not far from To village is Pha village, where Con Cuong district has been implementing an orange growing project for many years. With the seed support policy, Pha village people have reclaimed land, turning a wild mountainous area into lush orange gardens, promising to bring in hundreds of millions of dong per hectare of income. In 2009, Mr. Tang Ngoc Son's family was one of the first households to reclaim this land. All the effort put in, the land did not disappoint, now on a total area of ​​1.5 hectares, his family has hundreds of Van Du orange trees that are 5 years old and V2 orange trees that are more than 2 years old. Talking to the Provincial Party Secretary and the provincial leaders in the working delegation, Mr. Son excitedly said: “Van Du oranges can be harvested in the 3rd and 4th year if well cared for. This year, each 5-year-old Van Du orange tree produces about 400 fruits. Thus, the orange garden yields 15-17 tons of fruit. If the price remains the same as now, the family will earn over 300 million VND. Next year, the orange area promises to yield 20-25 tons, so the economic efficiency will be higher.”

Developing orange cultivation on a commercial scale is identified by Con Cuong as an open direction to increase people's income. Therefore, currently the whole district has planted more than 105 hectares of oranges, of which the area of ​​oranges in the basic construction period is nearly 82 hectares, the area of ​​oranges for business is 24 hectares with an average yield of 150 quintals/hectare, the output is 360 tons, the average income is 400 million VND/hectare. However, the development and expansion of orange growing area still faces many difficulties. For example, in Pha village, the land area that can grow oranges is about 200 hectares. The villagers have reclaimed and planted about 40 hectares of oranges. However, according to comrade Hoang Dinh Tuan - Chairman of Con Cuong District People's Committee, the most difficult problem to develop the orange growing area to cover the entire area is still building infrastructure for the area including: electricity and water. Having directly witnessed the effectiveness of the orange growing area in Pha village, comrade Ho Duc Phoc and his comrades in the working group were very impressed with this economic model. Therefore, in response to the proposal of the Chairman of the People's Committee of Con Cuong district, the Provincial Party Secretary directly contacted and introduced an expert in drilling and finding water in arid areas for Con Cuong district to solve the difficulty of irrigation water for the orange growing area.

Thus, it can be seen that the development of economic models plays a very important role in the work of hunger eradication and poverty reduction, and raising people's income; and this is also considered the core foundation in the successful implementation of the National Target Program on New Rural Construction not only in Con Cuong but in all localities, especially the localities in Western Nghe An. And in reality, the promotion of land potential with a total natural area of ​​nearly 174 thousand hectares to develop forest economy and agricultural and forestry production has become an important driving force to help Con Cuong achieve an economic growth rate of 7.65% in 2013, higher than the growth rate of the whole province.

The local budget revenue also exceeded 220% of the province's estimate, reaching nearly 16 billion VND. However, if looking at the whole picture, Con Cuong's development speed has not yet met expectations. The average income per capita of the people has increased, reaching 15.5 million VND but is still lower than the average of the whole province of 24 million VND. The poverty rate in 2013 of the district only decreased from 37.83% to 36.53%, which is only a decrease of 1.3%, lower than the average poverty reduction rate of the whole country of 2% and too slow compared to the general requirements of the province. Evaluating the above indicators, the Provincial Party Secretary pointed out: "Con Cuong has not had any economic breakthroughs. The district is still confused in identifying key crops and replicating economic models".

Comrade Vi Xuan Giap - Secretary of Con Cuong District Party Committee also considered this as a weakness of Con Cuong when frankly admitting in a working session with the provincial delegation: "The implementation of crop restructuring and intensive investment to achieve value on a cultivated area is still low. Economic development models are still few and have not been widely replicated." This is shown in the report of Con Cuong district, in the first 5 months of 2014, Con Cuong district only built 3 Quy duck breeding models, 1 goat breeding model, 1 commercial pig breeding model combined with biogas tank construction and 1 intensive rice farming model. In order to create a breakthrough for the district, comrade Dinh Viet Hong - Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee suggested: Con Cuong needs to focus on promoting the implementation and replication of many economic development models in building new rural areas. Besides, the district focuses on developing community tourism based on forest potential, especially the Western Nghe An biosphere reserve with the core being Pu Mat National Park.

Discussing the poverty alleviation direction of Con Cuong, the Provincial Party Secretary affirmed: Through economic models, State policies reach households directly and that is the condition to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty, improve people's living standards the fastest. In the poverty reduction strategy in Western Nghe An, the province uses many synchronous solutions, in which the effectiveness of implementing economic models has proven to be an important solution, contributing to accelerating the pace of hunger and poverty reduction in recent years. Therefore, Con Cuong must rely on its vast land potential to plan for suitable crop and livestock development and raw material forest development to improve efficiency per unit area. In that process, the district must proactively research and test new tree varieties, build models to guide the people. To do so, district leaders must be proactive, must work with research institutes and agricultural universities to bring in new varieties. Comrades must worry, if they do not worry, do not work hard, people will not find a way to develop the economy, the Provincial Party Secretary also requested the district to develop forest planting linked to the market in addition to focusing on exploiting the potential of eco-tourism.

Con Cuong, the land is considered the key to unlocking the potential of Western Nghe An for development. Hopefully, by effectively utilizing the inherent potentials and with the support of all levels, Tra Lan will be awakened, becoming the nucleus and driving force for the development of the entire Southwestern Nghe An region.

Thanh Duy