Not okay

(Baonghean) - A representative of the people, recently, when speaking at the National Assembly forum, earnestly called on farmers not to use herbicides and rat poison in agricultural production. Because of the love for the homeland, do not turn Chinese potatoes into Dalat potatoes. It sounds simple and rustic, but the more you think about it, the more you see that there are many things to discuss here.

Spraying herbicide (Illustration - Internet)

First of all, we must admit that the appeal is correct, but it does not hit the mark. Because, without using pesticides, how can farmers protect their crops from pests and weeds? Without using chemical fertilizers, how can they fertilize their plants? Without using growth stimulants, how can they harvest quickly, quickly turn over the land to increase productivity, and increase income. Meanwhile, the income of farmers, after "deducting the head and tail", is only a few tens of thousands of dong a day. In short, if we do not do that, how can we feed our families? People have to take care of themselves first before they can take care of others. Therefore, the appeal must be accompanied by concrete actions of assistance and support.

In fact, we keep complaining about farmers abusing chemicals in production, but how many people are persistent in helping and creating conditions for farmers to give up that habit without affecting their income? If farmers want to produce clean products, there must be mechanisms and policies to support capital, seeds, techniques, processes and even output. In this case, to renew a VietGAP production certificate, it costs 70 million VND. Not to mention the organic fertilizers and pesticides for the production stages are also much more expensive. Yet when the products are sold on the market, the price is not much higher.

The second problem is that there has never been a plan, strategy or program to protect and honor clean products put forth by the governing agencies. Therefore, when clean products are brought to consumption, traders cheat, confusing clean with unclean. So that consumers do not believe that there are really clean products but only fake ones, considering clean as dirty. If there is no more trust, of course the products cannot have a place. To put it bluntly, with the current situation, the space for clean agricultural products is very small and is always squeezed by dirty products and is at risk of being annexed because clean is too difficult to make a living. And once the profit from growing plants and animals according to clean processes to have clean products is not much higher than planting haphazardly, raising carelessly, then certainly not many people are interested, even though everyone wants to use clean, fragrant products.

So, just calling is not enough.

Duy Huong