Province to boast revenue from farms
DONG NAI (VNS) – Dong Nai People's Committee will invest VND46 billion (US$2.2 million) in developing sustainable agriculture.
The three-year project aims to help farms produce more products with competitive prices for domestic use and export. It also targets to minimise adverse effects that agricultural production might have on the environment.
The push to improve farming stems from the fact that product quality hasn't measured up, thus prices have been low, dissuading farmers from increasing farm production.
Under the project, the province will grant preferential loans to farms which produce goods for export.
A fund to encourage agricultural production will be used to support the application of technology into production to minimise post-harvest losses. This will apply to farming and aquatic products.
The Southern province will fully fund product trademark registration and website construction.
Besides, farm owners will get free consultations on how to protect their trademarks.
Training courses on farm management, marketing and trade promotion will be held for farm owners and their staff. These courses will receive support from provincial authorities.
With such support, the provinces will set a target to raise revenue from each farm to VND6 billion ($288,000) a year from the current VND2.6 billion ($127,000).
Under the project, the number of the farms meeting standards will increase from around 2000 to 2,500 by 2015 and 3,000 by 2020.
Of the 2,161 farms, 524 specialise in cultivation and 1,539 in animal husbandry.
The province has three farms planting forests, 25 raising shrimp and fish and 41 combining tree planting and animal raising.
Most of the farm owners have equipped themselves with machines to improve productivity and hundreds of others have applied information technology to production and trading. – VNS