The number of agricultural households has decreased gradually in HCM City (Illustrative image. Source: VNA)HCM City (VNA) - The number ofagricultural households has decreased gradually in HCM City, according to arecent report on results of the Rural, Agricultural and Fishery Censusconducted by the General Statistics Office.
It is due to increasing urbanisation, naturalcauses like climate change, and low incomes from farming, and many peopleworking in the agricultural sector have switched to other vocations.
Agriculture used to be an important sector thatprovided jobs for thousands of people in the city since 1986.
But from around 2000 its importance began todecline, and the number fell from 140,045 workers then to 43,355 by2016.
By July 2016, the rate of agriculturalhouseholds (farming, forestry, fishing) in the city fell to 6.8 percent.
One of the reasons for the decline is the lackof government support for agriculture.
Phan Quoc Hung of District 12 has grown orchidsfor 20 years. Recently, he and his father created an app to help grow freshvegetables in plastic trays in apartment buildings.
But he has not received any financial supportfrom local authorities. He said: “I have invested about 1 billion VND (44,000USD) in my farm. But I need 3 billion VND to develop my business.”
To develop their aquaculture potential, Can Gioand Nha Be districts plan to have 6,000ha of shrimp farms. However, eachhectare requires up to 700 million VND to develop, meaning many farmers areunable to afford them, and the plan remains unfulfilled.
The city rolled out several policies last yearto support agriculture, especially people investing in clean agriculture andthose using high technology.
A training programme has been instituted totrain 3,000 agricultural workers in 2018- 2020.
Nguyen Hai An, director of the High-TechEnterprise Training Centre, said: “Our goal is to become the top service centrefor high-tech agricultural production. Our centre will provide legalconsultancy and training for potential agricultural companies.”
Le Thanh Liem, Vice Chairman of the municipalPeople’s Committee, has instructed agricultural officials to draft a plan fordeveloping agriculture from now through 2020. -VNA
VNA
