Eliminate the muscle economy

(Baonghean) - It seems that there is a new concept, a new definition of our country's agriculture, which is: Processing, muscle agriculture.

The reason for such an assessment was clearly analyzed by Professor, Academician Tran Dinh Long - Chairman of the Vietnam Plant Breeding Association at a meeting between the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and scientists held a few days ago. According to him: We are proud of 12 agricultural products that are the top two exporters in the world, but the rice export value is 3 billion USD, but we spend 2.9 billion USD. That is a processed, muscular agriculture, we depend on foreign countries for food, plants, seeds, pesticides, fertilizers...

High-tech agriculture is an inevitable direction. Photo: Internet

Such assessment and evaluation is completely reasonable, because for a long time, farmers across the country have been sweating and crying in the fields but are still poor because their agricultural products are simply exchanged for money and labor, but they have not been able to put intelligence and brainpower into the products to increase their value and sell them for more money. Therefore, when the sweat is gone, the money is gone. Farmers are still the people with the lowest income and the most precarious lives in today's society.

But if you think about it carefully, it is not only in agriculture but also in industry and other fields, the part that we can participate in and produce is mainly muscle processing. Just look at the products that increase our country's export turnover, they are mainly from foreign enterprises. Of that huge source of profit, we only get a tiny bit from the sweat of the workers who work for them with cheap wages, which we once considered a "competitive advantage" compared to other countries.

The products we sell are mainly resources. These are things that we just dig up and sell, without much thinking or brainpower, and of course, they are purely muscle and sweat of thousands of workers. Every year, a significant amount of foreign currency is brought back to our country from the sweat and muscle of hundreds of thousands of overseas workers. And we are very proud of that and continue to consider this an important solution, a strength for economic development.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with honest work, sweating and crying to earn money. But not being bad does not mean continuing to agree and encourage, but we need to think again about whether we should continue to do so or not. Because the value gained from sweat and muscle is too small, not commensurate with the effort. And looking at it more broadly, we see that a country, or a family, an individual, rarely gets rich from sweat and muscle, but mainly from intelligence, from brainpower. It is time to think about giving up the method of selling sweat for money and instead selling brainpower for money. To put it poetically, it is building a knowledge economy, getting rich from knowledge. Moving towards eliminating the current muscle-based, processing economy.

Duy Huong