HÀ NỘI — Hundreds of university and college graduates who studied farming and breeding will be assigned to work in agricultural cooperatives beginning this year.

A conference held in Hà Nội on Thursday launched the pilot programme under which the first young graduates will go to work at agricultural cooperatives.

By the end of last year, the country had more than 11,600 agricultural cooperatives with more than 4.1 million members, a decrease of more than 1.3 million members since 2012, according to the Department of Cooperatives and Rural Development (DCRD) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

On average, each cooperative has about 368 members.

As many as 193 agricultural cooperatives across the country apply high technology to their growing and processing work.

However, cooperatives’ development is still limited due to fund shortages and a lack of connections between producers and consumer markets, said Ma Quang Trung, director of the DCRD.

Last year, in a conference summing up five years of implementing the 2012 Law on Cooperatives, experts agreed that one of the main reasons for the cooperatives’ lack of innovation was that their workers had little official training.

About 60 per cent of cooperatives’ workers did not graduate from high school.

Trần Thanh Nam, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that most of the workers were elderly and had long since left school. Cooperatives did not have scientific and technological officials to give guidance to other members, he added.

To improve cooperative workers’ skills, the DCRD set up a pilot programme to bring young graduates to work on agricultural cooperatives.

Funds for the programme will come from the State budget.

Lê Đức Thịnh, deputy director of the DCRD, said that cooperative workers’ management abilities and professional skills were the most important factor in developing successful agricultural cooperatives.

The cooperatives in need will receive support to employ three graduates. The graduates’ terms will be no longer than three years.

To employ the young graduates, the cooperatives will show their detailed plans for production and explain how they will utilise the experiences of the graduates, according to the DCRD. — VNS