Illustrative photo (Photo: VNA)Nam Dinh (VNA) – Vietnam’s northern regionharvested some 5.6 million tonnes of rice during the summer-autumn crop, upmore than 320,000 tonnes from the same period last year, heard a recentconference.
Tran Xuan Dinh, deputy head of the Department of CropProduction under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), saidat the conference that each hectare of rice produces an average of 5 tonnes, up0.35 tonne against 2017.
Since the beginning of this year, the localities haveshifted over 10,480 hectares of rice to other crops, a year-on-year rise of1,800 hectares, the official said.
As of early October 2018, the northern provinces had cultivated nearly280,000 hectares of vegetables, mostly corn, sweet potato, soybean and peanut,he added.
Many localities have applied science and technology inproduction, Dinh said, taking the organic rice farming model in Hanoi’s ChuongMy district and the rice production-consumption chain in Nam Dinh province whichhave yielded high economic values as examples.
It is forecast that the region will face water shortagesduring the upcoming winter-spring crop.
Given this, northern midland and mountainous provinces havetaken the initiative in shifting rice cultivation to other crops.
Apart from forming large-scale rice fields, regionallocalities have also continued with technological application in production inorder to raise productivity and quality.
MARD Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh urged cities andprovinces to roll out preferential policies and incentives to attract investorsin agriculture and rural areas, while developing linkage chains among farmersas well as between farmers and businesses to ensure markets for local products.
He also suggested expanding services of enterprises,cooperatives and farmers’ groups in the supply of varieties, materials andpesticide, and irrigation to cut production cost and improve efficiency.
The region is expected to cultivate more than 1.1 millionhectares of rice and garner some 7.2 million tonnes in the upcoming winter-springcrop.-VNA
VNA
