Is hi-tech agriculture in Vietnam developing in the right direction according to policies and plans? Or is reality still a call, exhortation, analysis without any synchronous scale investment?  

With an agricultural area of ​​more than 29 million hectares nationwide, from 2017 to now, only 29 hi-tech agricultural zone projects have been planned, built and put into operation across the country. That proves that the synchronous implementation of high-tech agricultural models still has difficulties to be solved. Among the specific difficulties are:  

High-tech investment capital: is the first obstacle for the application of high technology to agriculture when agricultural enterprises have only about 4,000 and the rest are farmers with over 9.3 million households, so investing in high technology facing many difficulties in capital, and it is necessary to have planning and support policies from each local area to the State level. 

Unable to implement synchronously: With agriculture still being the leading economy of the country. The competitiveness between Vietnam and other countries in the region such as Thailand is still inferior because there are no industrial agricultural models large-scale and scalable high-tech. The models that have been implemented are still in small clusters, at enterprise and provincial scale, so their ability to develop synchronously on a national scale is limited. 

Complex and cumbersome models: Current high-tech agricultural models are cumbersome, requiring investment in equipment and machinery. This makes it difficult to give to farmers without training programs, as well as difficult to deploy on a large scale. 

In addition, the trend of green agriculture, clean food (organic) and consumer belief issues affect the need for food traceability, creating import barriers in advanced countries, and agricultural products of Vietnam are at a disadvantage on the export path when they cannot prove production standards and product origin.  

Nowadays, the traceability technologies, especially Blockchain traceability are researched and applied by technology companies, but the cost and traceability in the whole cultivation - supply chain remains the same is an issue to consider.  

Facing these opportunities as well as challenges, Vietnam needs innovative ideas to solve the current situation, contributing to perfecting the country's high-tech agricultural.  With expertise in technology and strength in Blockchain, BOM Software Joint Stock Company has researched and developed the idea of ​​a low-cost smart farm model combining IoT and Blockchain with the ability to apply on a large scale to accelerate the process of applying high technology to agriculture.  

The idea of ​​a smart farm model (Smart Farm) uses a Gateway system capable of receiving and transmitting broadcasts within a radius of 10km to receive information signals from sensors installed right on the farmland, then the Gateway aggregates and sends information to the IoT server and displays the information on a phone application. Therefore, users can monitor and manage the farm only through smart phones.  

The collected information will be analyzed the content, nutrient concentration of elements in the soil, moisture, weather, fruit size, and made predictions about diseases and natural disasters by AI technology. From there, users can automatically control irrigation and lighting systems based on recommendations and warnings.  

At the same time, the information collected in real time from the sensors will be stored on the Blockchain platform, thereby applying Blockchain traceability technology right from the real-time data input by the sensor, so that the traceability results can be obtained in real time, not the information that is only compiled and entered into the Blockchain system by users. 

Low-cost smart farm model with the goal of minimizing investment equipment and machinery, reducing investment costs, streamlining the management system but optimizing the features of IoT technology combining Blockchain. Moreover, AI is the solution to the real problem of opportunities and challenges of high-tech agriculture in Vietnam.   

Currently, the project is being called by BOM Software for joint development and investment from partners, businesses, and investment funds for a sustainable agriculture.