Hanoi (VNA) – A seminar on risk management inagriculture – experience from Canada was held in Hanoi on February 21.

The event was a joint effort between the Ministry ofAgriculture and Rural Development and the Vietnam Cooperative EnterpriseDevelopment (VCED) project.

The VCED project aims to form and develop five new large-scalecooperatives in the Mekong Delta provinces of Soc Trang, Binh Thuan, NinhThuan, Lam Dong and Ben Tre since 2015.

It helps improve farmers’ income in a fair and sustainablemanner via developing agriculture value chains in a new cooperative model, aswell as enhance cooperatives’ competitiveness in various areas, including managementcapacity, workshop and equipment upgrade, and trademark building.

Gaby Breton, co-Director of VCED project and chiefrepresentative of Canada’s Socodevi in Vietnam, said the project has benefited manyproducts such as grapefruit in Ninh Thuan, dragon fruit in Binh Thuan,grapefruit in Ben Tre, milch cow in Soc Trang and Lam Dong.

Farmers are also given an insight into agriculture insuranceand risk management via the project, she said.

Jean Yves Drolet, expert in risk management in agriculturefrom Socodevi, said Socodevi now maintains business links with nearly 25,000agriculture and forestry farms.

According to him, farmers in Canada are given access to farmand crop insurance, as well as loans with reasonable interest rates.

Participants at the event also discussed how to improvecooperatives’ access to loans.

Socodevi now groups 27 cooperatives and organisations withan aim to share expertise and work with partners in developing countries. Ithas also made considerable contributions to Vietnam’s socio-economicdevelopment over the past nearly two decades./.