• 10 Aug 2022
• 2022

Development of Industry 4.0 Technology Application in Agriculture in Dong Nai Province – Part 1: Practical Agriculture Development towards 4.0 application

Agriculture only accounts for nearly 6% of GDP of Dong Nai Province but also the backbone of this provincial economy, creating a volume of products both to satisfy the needs of millions of people in the Province and the Southeast region and to contribute to exports, especially in the context that the Covid epidemic has been raging, pushing back Vietnamese growth rate and other countries around the world, Dong Nai Province’s agriculture has been growing despite not-high-enough speed. Dong Nai Province’s agriculture can grow faster and more efficiently if this province increases high technology application, including 4.0 technology. In part 1 of this article, the authors focus on assessing the general situation and the situation of agricultural development applying 4.0 technology in the current Dong Nai Province.

The current situation of agricultural development in Dong Nai in terms of the 4.0 Revolution

Instead of commenting on the application of 4.0 technology in agriculture in Dong Nai, we quote the comments from an expert in the field of agriculture related to high-tech application in Dong Nai – Dr. Nguyen Do Anh Tuan, Director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development: “The highlight is that Dong Nai Province has attracted farmers and businesses to invest in new technology agriculture and smart solutions with a good and an effective way to find solutions for applying modern technology but it should be cheap and suitable for local production conditions”. Specific examples are as follows:

In terms of the livestock sector: In accordance with statistics, Dong Nai has approximately 246 pig farms and 170 high-tech chicken farms. Typical examples are as below:

• Thanh Duc Livestock and Production Trading Service Co., Ltd (Xuan Loc District) has imported modern European livestock technology from the temperature and humidity balance system; technology of cooling, heating and so on that are improved to suit tropical weather conditions.
• Xuan Phu Livestock Service Cooperative (Xuan Loc District) is applying high technology from Canada in the breeding pig production process. This unit is also using advanced software to optimize the raising process and to strictly control the quality of breeding pigs. The objective of the cooperative is to create a source of good seed that is widely available to domestic farmers.
• Viet Farm Trading Co., Ltd (Xuan Loc District) invested in an organic chicken manure factory and set up a 13-hectare farm with a greenhouse system to grow clean vegetables and fruits. The farm owner has designed a robot that is automatically programmed to water the plants; applying solar energy to operate the cooling system in the greenhouse for the cheapest production cost and so on.
• Many businesses apply closed-cold-barn breeding in accordance with biosecurity processes, deploying livestock management through Te-Food software and so on.

4.0 Agriculture in terms of crop production major: Dong Nai has been implementing over 50 types of effective agricultural models with an area of ​​nearly 80,000 hectares, accounting for more than 28% of the area of ​​crops. Many production areas have applied high technology, including: water-saving technology (smart and economical irrigation) with the increased mechanization on crops up to 84%. In particular, the pepper garden of Mr. Nguyen Van Quang, the first class of farmers in Dong Nai to be certified with GlobalGAP pepper garden in Lam San Commune (Cam My District), did not hesitate to invest capital to install an economical irrigation system according to the Israeli technology project for the entire 3-hectare pepper garden of his family. This irrigation system is pre-programmed which can be controlled through using a smartphone to remotely turn on and off.

4.0 Aquaculture application in Dong Nai: Many localities in Dong Nai, typically in Nhon Trach District, comprise a large number of households investing in a high-tech shrimp farming system in accordance with the CPF combine process transferred from the Central C.P Vietnam Delegation. This technology is invested in water treatment system, automatic feeding system and the cultured-shrimp growth monitor.

Limitations in 4.0 agricultural development in Dong Nai Province

In order to deeply assess the application of 4.0 technology in the agricultural sector, our authors surveyed 246 enterprises. In which, the group of enterprises with limited liability (LLC) accounts for the largest number with 194 enterprises (accounting for 78.9%); second in number are enterprises with 100% foreign capital (16 enterprises, accounting for 6.5%) and the third is joint stock enterprises without state capital (15 enterprises, accounting for 6.1%); 4^th place in this group is the private sector (8 enterprises, accounting for 3.%).

From Table 1, 134 enterprises have knowledge regarding 4.0 Industry but not enough (accounting for 54.5%); the proportion of enterprises that are only aware of but have not studied without any information is still high (76 enterprises are only aware of but have not learned, 19 enterprises do not have information), this group is enterprises with small-scaled production and limited capital; therefore, there is no orientation to learn regarding these new technology applications.

The survey results of the research team in Table 2 indicate that up to 135 businesses (accounting for nearly 55%) have not had a strategy to build and to apply 4.0  Industry yet, for which Dong Nai Provincial Authority need to research for timely support for. The Provincial People’s Committee (People’s Committee) needs to study the model of consulting groups for each separate product group so that businesses with the same product group can support or coordinate with each other to apply technology more effectively. Figure 2 presents that one positive signal is that 84 enterprises are developing a strategy to apply Industry 4.0 (accounting for 34.1%) and 23 enterprises (9.3%) are implementing a strategy to apply Industry 4.0. 4.0.

From the survey results in Table 3, the investment level of enterprises for the 4.0 Industry application is being modest and focuses on most simple 4.0 technologies. The main reason is that the business scale of the majority of surveyed enterprises is small, making it difficult to access investment capital.

Table 3: The current situation of agricultural enterprises in Dong Nai Province investing in 4.0 Industry application (Unit: Enterprise)

Source: Survey results by the research group in 2021

In accordance with the survey results in Table 4, the types of 4.0 technology that agricultural enterprises in Dong Nai are applying are only at the simple or medium stage. There are three industrial 4.0 systems that are widely applied by enterprises: (1) PPS – Production Planning System with 75 enterprises; (2) MES – Manufacturing Execution System with 63 enterprises together; (3) Product Lifecycle Management System used by 63 enterprises. The remaining systems are only used by approximately 12-16 businesses. The main reason is the lack of funds and human resources to operate the system, moreover, many businesses are not aware of the need to strongly apply Industry 4.0 because they doubt the effectiveness compared to the costs.

Table 4: The situation of using 4.0 technology in management by agricultural enterprises in Dong Nai Province (Unit: Enterprise)

Source: Survey results by the research group in 2021

The survey results in Table 5 show that the quality of human resources to meet the requirements of the 4.0 revolution is being limited.

Table 5: The current situation of resources of the enterprises in Đồng Nai Province that can meet the requirements of 4.0 industry (Unit: Enterprise)

Source: Survey results by the research group in 2021

In accordance with the above surveys, the authors assess that those experts and employees have skills in information and communication security, system thinking, data analysis techniques and communication information security is quite high (from 38% to 61% of enterprises); however, this team has insufficient knowledge and skills that need to be trained or re-trained. In addition, in agricultural enterprises in Dong Nai, the number of experts and technicians who do not have the skills to operate technology 4.0 is being rather high (from 24% - 47%), especially the technical skills in automation technology (117 enterprises), application development techniques for supporting systems (114 enterprises), techniques for using working software (113 enterprises) and more. This core problem that needs to be set for the Local Government of Dong Nai Province in terms of the desire to promote and to support businesses to apply Industry 4.0 towards the agricultural production process to achieve high efficiency, competitiveness and sustainability, how must the workforce be trained? Therefore, the deployment of human resources is one of the major issues that Dong Nai Province needs to consider and to implement immediately.

Although some areas of agricultural industries in the province have initially applied the technology of agriculture 4.0, in general, the application is being fragmented and spontaneous. The level of 4.0 technology application in agriculture in Dong Nai Province is not strong enough to meet the development requirements. For example, Dong Nai Province currently has 246 pig farms and 170 high-tech chicken farms. For other provinces, these are impressive numbers (246, 170); however, compared to the total of more than 2,200 currently, the number of high-tech farms in the province is being rather modest. The Project from Israel related to the feasibility on sustainable development of high-tech agriculture in Dong Nai Province to 2025, with a vision to 2030 has been performing rather slowly. The authors agree with the comments of Dr. Le Quy Kha - Deputy Director of the Southern Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology: “The high agriculture in Dong Nai Province is much more advanced than that of other Provinces. Dong Nai Province has the variety of farming models as well as raising livestock, growing hydroponic vegetables, raising clean chicken eggs, growing VietGAP pomelo. However, those models have only appeared in large enterprises and large farms, and the rest has not become a revolution for the entire population yet.”

Please refer to the full research Development of Industry 4.0 Technology Application in Agriculture in Dong Nai Province here. Author group: Prof. Dr. Võ Thanh Thu – Faculty of International Business–Marketing, UEH School of Business; MSc. Phạm Quang Văn – Lecturer from Industry University, HCMC.

This writing is in series of spreading research and applied knowledge from UEH with “Research Contribution For All – Nghiên Cứu Vì Cộng Đồng” message, UEH would like to invite readers to follow Newsletter ECONOMY NO #53 “Solutions For 4.0 Industry Boost for Agriculture in Dong Nai Province”.

News, photos: Author group, UEH Department of Marketing – Communication

 , , ,  and ( 2019) Revolution 4.0: Industry vs. Agriculture in a Future Development for SMEs

 ( 2019) Historical increase in agricultural machinery weights enhanced soil stress levels and adversely affected soil functioning