Restructuring creates a breakthrough in forestry

(Baonghean) - Switching from traditional forest exploitation to protection, planting and enriching forests is a sustainable direction that the Forestry sector has persistently implemented over the past many years. This activity actively contributes to greening barren hills, creating raw materials for the paper processing industry, gradually solving jobs and income for forest workers. Promoting that achievement, in response to the requirements of industrialization and modernization of agriculture and rural areas, urges Nghe An Forestry Sector to continue restructuring more effectively.

Forestry tree seed production at Thanh Chuong Protective Forest Management Board. Photo: V.D

The whole province currently has over 1 million hectares of forest and forestry land with a structure of 3 types of forests (including protective, special-use and production forests), the forest cover rate reaches 54.6%. Of which, the area of ​​planted forests is over 160 thousand hectares. Thanks to the application of advances in varieties, the productivity and output of planted forests have increased rapidly compared to before. Currently, the productivity of paper raw material forests reaches an average of 100 m3/ha and the revenue is 70 million VND/ha/production cycle. Planted forests not only contribute to greening bare hills and protecting the environment, but have also formed a concentrated paper raw material area with nearly 100 thousand hectares, on average each year exploiting and processing 400 - 450 thousand m3 of raw wood, 2,000 - 2,500 tons of pine resin, 4,000 tons of bamboo to create export products, bringing in foreign currency of over 89 million USD, creating jobs and income for hundreds of thousands of workers and households living near the forest.

However, in response to the demand for industrialization of rural agriculture, the forestry sector of the country in general and Nghe An in particular has revealed some limitations. First of all, it can be seen that the role and function of each type of forest is not clear in the overall development of the forestry sector; The planning has not attached orientational goals, has not resolved the development chain and its intrinsic value. The potential advantages of forests have not been well exploited, the value from forests accounts for a low proportion in the economy. Forest exploitation and burning have not been prevented. Although the lives of forest workers have improved, there are still many difficulties.

With special-use forests (172 thousand hectares), the main function is to conserve biodiversity and protect the environment, but in reality, this function has not been fully exploited. Special-use forests such as Pu Mat, Pu Hoat, Pu Huong National Parks... are considered "gold mines" preserving rare species of animals and plants, including many species not yet listed in the World Red Book that are being "shelved". At the same time, there is a lack of solutions to exploit the values ​​of biodiversity and the advantages of forests to develop unique tourism and service industries, sharing benefits with the community.

Regarding protective forests, the area is quite large (362 thousand hectares), but the exploitation of forest values ​​such as forest products and non-forest products is not practical; investment sources from non-governmental organizations have not been attracted to "take forests to feed forests, take forests to feed people", bringing people closer to forests, contributing to hunger eradication and poverty reduction. Particularly in some protective forest areas, due to the lack of good management mechanisms, forest fires, exploitation of forest products, and slash-and-burn farming still occur frequently and seriously. In 2014 alone, dozens of protective forest fires occurred in some districts, causing damage to hundreds of hectares of 4-5 year old pine trees.

As for production forests, although they are assessed to have strong development, the planted forest area is mainly paper raw material forests, there are no large timber forests, they are being produced and traded in a floating manner, mainly selling raw materials, not creating large-scale raw material areas, linked to processing to form a commodity production chain, with diverse products, so the economic value is still low. Currently, out of over 160 thousand hectares of planted forests, 60% are acacia raw material forests serving the processing of raw chips for export.

In addition, although the industry's organizational system has been reorganized and transformed into 14 forest management boards and 5 one-member limited liability forestry companies, it has not yet become a "midwife" of input and output services to create a close link to promote the development of forestry on a commodity production scale. Some forestry companies are in poor health, have weak production and business capacity and are struggling. The management boards of protective and special-use forests operate with heavy administrative duties, lack dynamism and innovation, and all activities depend on the State's purse.

Meanwhile, the inadequate and unsynchronized mechanisms and policies have not created leverage to promote the development of forestry, especially not attractive enough to attract businesses and investors. Infrastructure investment policies, especially the budget for building forestry export roads, are low, the budget is insignificant, only 4-5 billion VND per year, so many places with forests do not have roads, the exploitation and transportation of planted forest products is difficult, costly, high cost, and unprofitable. The support mechanism is not synchronized, some programs such as Program 30a support in small drops, fragmented; Hunger eradication and poverty reduction programs are duplicated, unattractive, and lack motivation for the poor to overcome difficulties and strive to stick with forestry.

The application of technical advances in non-varieties production has not been significant. Most of the forests and forestry land have been assigned to households for management, but they are still fragmented, small-scale, low-productivity, and the forest quality does not meet the requirements for the process of reorganizing production on a large-scale, concentrated basis. The income value per unit area of ​​planted forest is low, in many places it only reaches 7-8 million VND/ha/year, while in other countries it has reached 30-40 million VND/ha/year.

Forestry processing is at a weak and backward stage. Apart from the paper chip production line and MDF wood processing factory in Nam Cam industrial park, there is no large-scale deep processing facility in the area... Based on these weaknesses, to create a rapid and sustainable development for Nghe An Forestry industry, there is no other way but to restructure and innovate the growth model of the forestry sector. Accordingly, it is necessary to rearrange and reorganize to change the correlation of resource structure, components and other resources to improve efficiency in the Forestry industry.

Pursuant to Decision No. 899/QD-TTg, dated June 10, 2013 on approving the project of restructuring the agricultural sector of the Prime Minister and Decision No. 1565/QD-BNN-TCLN, dated July 8, 2013, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development's objectives and tasks of restructuring the forestry sector are to focus on promoting the socialization of forestry, attracting economic sectors, social organizations and people to participate, increasing the added value of the sector, creating jobs, increasing income, contributing to hunger eradication, poverty reduction, improving living standards, contributing to maintaining national defense and security. Forestry restructuring must be integrated with socio-economic development in other fields; Promoting the improvement of product quality, creating competitiveness and efficiency in production, encouraging the development of forest product processing industry from domestic raw materials.

Checking the quality of planted forests in Khe Tron (Thanh Chuong). Photo: V. D

With special-use forests, it is necessary to determine a forest conservation strategy focusing on biodiversity conservation, fully exploiting its functions and roles, early planning of eco-tourism systems, and marketization of biodiversity products and nature conservation. This will contribute to sharing benefits and improving the lives of people in the conservation area.

For protective forests, it is necessary to enhance the value of ensuring environmental safety, irrigation dams, hydropower, creating a stable environment, ensuring national defense and security for Western Nghe An, maximizing environmental protection associated with the development of large-scale livestock farming, specialty trees and animals, craft villages, and taking advantage of forest environmental services.

With production forests, it is necessary to establish raw material areas associated with deep processing, creating competitive and high-value products. Thereby, promoting the role of enterprises and economic sectors in investment and development. Creating a favorable environment to attract investors to invest in the forest product processing industry and high-yield forest planting. Creating opportunities for farming households to link horizontally in raw material production and vertically with enterprises in forest product consumption and processing.

The restructuring process requires a combination of green growth model innovation. This is growth based on exploiting and maximizing forest profits to create the highest revenue, stabilize the internal forest, ensure social security, and aim at sustainable management of special-use and protective forest areas; and effectively use forestry land. To achieve this goal, we must first focus on reviewing and distinguishing 3 types of stable forests in the long-term plan to 2020, with a vision to 2030, linking planning with targets for each type of forest, especially production forests with value-added chains; focusing on developing large timber forests and specialty tree areas with advantages, and at the same time implementing deep processing to soon create high-quality, high-value products that the market needs.

Nguyen Tien Lam

Deputy Director of Department of Agriculture and Rural Development