Quickly remove barriers to develop agricultural tourism

As a large gerbera growing area of Hanoi city, Dong Thap commune (Dan Phuong district) has the potential to exploit tourism development. However, to make the potential become reality for local households, there are still many difficulties. According to Director of Dong Thap Flower Cooperative (Dan Phuong district) Bui Van Kha, the commune has nearly 30 hectares specializing in gerbera. Of which, 8 households participate in the cooperative. In fact, many groups of visitors have contacted the cooperative wishing to experience flower growing, visit and learn the model. However, because flowers are grown on agricultural land, the cooperative is not allowed to build structures in the fields. Therefore, when the groups come to visit, the cooperative has not arranged a place to welcome them; there is no resting place, no shelter when it is rainy or sunny; there are no sanitary facilities... The greenhouses are also simply built with bamboo poles, quite low, not creating a beautiful landscape for visitors to check-in and take photos.

Currently, many agricultural development models in the capital are in the same situation as Hoa Dong Thap Cooperative. Director of Van An High-Tech Agricultural Cooperative (Yen My commune, Thanh Tri district) Nguyen Thi Thanh Hang said that in order to have a large enough agricultural production area, the cooperative must rent public land from Yen My commune. However, the land lease contract is only 5 years, so it is very difficult for the cooperative to invest in a system of greenhouses, net houses, pre-processing houses, and modern storage houses to serve production. "I hope the State will extend the land lease contract term to 10 years, 20 years so that people can feel secure in investing," said Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Hang.

On the other hand, investing in ecological agriculture combined with experience requires a huge amount of capital, but because the mechanism and policies to support the development of this type are still limited (mainly support in design consulting, training, and propaganda), it has not attracted investors and large enterprises... Besides, there are no standards, criteria, or specific concepts for the ecological agriculture model combined with experience tourism , leading to confusion in investment and construction implementation in many places.

Hanoi has great potential to develop agricultural tourism and in fact the model has confirmed its “double effectiveness” compared to pure agriculture. However, difficulties in mechanisms and policies are also partly limiting the full potential of the agricultural tourism sector.

People hope that the city's authorities will soon develop a set of criteria and standards for ecological agricultural models combined with experiential education; promote the development of ecological agricultural production areas combined with tourism and experiences... At the same time, there will be specific mechanisms and policies to remove difficulties for agricultural tourism models.

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