Dong Nai (VNA) - The south’s key economic provinces, suchas Dong Nai, Ba Ria-Vung Tau and Binh Duong, have recently shifted focus fromagricultural to non-agricultural sectors, resulting in a serious shortage ofagricultural workers during harvest season.

In the last few years, farmers in these provinces have struggledto find seasonal labourers during the harvest of agricultural products such aspepper, cashew and coffee. They said they are willing to pay high wages, but fewlabourers were available and interested in working the fields.

In Nhon Trach district’s Phuoc Khanh commune in Dong Nai province,sugarcane crops stand ready to be harvested. However, few locals want to do thejob.

Le Minh Dung, a seasonal labourer said that he was paid 500,000VND (22 USD) each day to harvest the sugarcane crops. This is a good payment,but it was a hard job, he said.

Most labourers came from the surrounding provinces, as local youngpeople had left to work in industrial zones, he added.

According to Dung, in order to have labourers work in these sugarcane fields, owners of the fields must deposit a sum of money as a way ofbooking labourers.

Nguyen Duc Cuong, owner of the 0.5 hectare-pepper garden in BinhPhuoc province’s Thanh Hoa commune, said he needed 10 people to work hard for10 days to collect all peppers in his garden during the harvest. “We have topay high to please them. We’ll be dead if they leave,” he said.

He cited that owners of pepper gardens had to pay 200,000-500,000VND for labourers each day and offered free lunch for them in the recent peppercrop in Bu Dop district.

Vo Van Du, owner of more than 6-hectare pepper garden, said thereused to be so many idle laborers in the commune that he just called them severaldays before the harvest. Now he has to hire labourers to collect his peppersstarting in the lunar New Year in February.

“My family members can not pick all the peppers alone. Each sao(360sq.m) needs at least two pickers,” he said.

Le Quoc Viet, chairman of Xuan Loc district’s Farmers Associationin Dong Nai province, said that most locals chose to work in industrial zonesinstead of working in fields, as the work is less hard and offers stableincome.

Meanwhile, seasonal labourers from other localities moved when thework called. Therefore, in the harvest time, owners of the crops had no choicebut to pay high wages.

Dong Nai is one of top economic provinces in the region, with astrong shift from agricultural to industrial and service sectors. The number ofhouseholds in rural areas of the province has increased in the past severalyears, but the proportion of households engaged in agricultural production,forestry and fishery has sharply decreased.

Figures from the province in 2016 showed that there are more than481,000 households in rural areas. Of those, more than 136,000 households areengaged in agriculture, forestry and fishery – a decrease of over 18,600households who have moved to the fields of industry, construction and services.

Meanwhile, Ba Ria-Vung Tau province has focused on the marineeconomy, thanks to the national and international port network. Arepresentative of Chau Duc district’s Division of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment said that the district will allocate a land fund of about 11,000hectares for non-agricultural purposes.

Of that, more than 3,000 hectares will be used for industrialdevelopment, 700 hectares for socio-economic development and the rest forinfrastructure development.

Le Van Goi, deputy chief of Dong Nai province’s coordinatingoffice of new rural development programmes, said that the industrialisation ofrural areas and the shortage of seasonal labour are unavoidable.

To solve this problem, he suggested that farmers apply science andtechnology into their agricultural production.

He said to deal with the scarcity of labourers, some householdsreceive bank loans to buy machines that reduce the need for manual labour. Manyfarmers have invested in installing irrigation systems and purchasing machinesfor land preparation and harvest.

Pham Minh Dao, former director of the provincial Department ofAgriculture and Rural Development, said that the number of machines foragricultural production – more than 9,000 machines and 2,200 harvesters andmills – are still limited compared to the hundreds of thousands of hectares ofcultivated land in the province.

He suggested that it was necessary to form specialised farmingareas and produce large-field models to reduce costs, increase competitivenessand minimise manual labourers.-VNA