Harvesting Đông Triều custard apples. Quảng Ninh promotes digital transformation by offering high-quality agricultural products to the e-commerce platform, including Đông Triều custard apple. VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Vân

QUẢNG NINH — Quảng Ninh considers digital transformation a strategic and important solution for the sustainable development of the agricultural sector.

The province also expects the digital transformation to create a breakthrough in productivity, quality and competitiveness for agricultural products on domestic and foreign markets.

Nguyễn Minh Sơn, director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Quảng Ninh, said that the agricultural sector would focus on developing a synchronous and comprehensive digital transformation to have development of high-tech agriculture and agricultural management based on a digital data platform. This sector will also apply digital technology to automate production and business processes, managing and monitoring the origin of agricultural products and supply chains.

In addition, Quảng Ninh will develop e-commerce in agriculture, focusing on essential products of the province. It now has many famous agricultural products such as Bình Liêu vermicelli, Cô Tô squid, Hạ Long squid cake, Vân Đồn peanut worm, Đông Triều custard apples, Quảng Yên sea crab, Trà Cổ sentinel crab, Móng Cái and Tiên Yên chicken.

To reach these goals, the province will build a data system to trace the origin of the farm produce and grant QR codes, anti-counterfeiting stamps, and certification on VietGAP, GlobalGAP and organic products to those.

It also promotes the development of coded planting and aquaculture regions and coded processing and packaging facilities to increase the quantity and quality of agricultural export products.

Meanwhile, planted forests must have forest certificates, and products under the One Commune One Products (OCOP) programme must be standardised and produced under the chain.

At present, Quảng Ninh's agricultural sector has perfected a database on the traceability of Quảng Ninh's agricultural, forestry and seafood products and provided accounts for management purposes to 142 enterprises, cooperatives, and production, processing and inadequate processing facilities.

At the same time, the province provides information about 456 products under the OCOP programme for supermarkets, markets, 27 shops introducing and selling OCOP products, and five e-commerce trading floors. It has also supported 418 enterprises, cooperatives, and business households to list and do transactions on e-commerce platforms.

According to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) of Quảng Ninh, this province now has 41 planting regions and five packaging facilities granted codes, meeting export requirements for farm produce. This is an excellent advantage for the province's agricultural production to improve productivity and the economic value of agricultural products.

The province has over 1,000 hectares of agricultural production regions meeting VietGAP standards, over 90 hectares for organic farming production, 28 facilities having VietGAP certification in the livestock sector, 416 facilities applying advanced quality management programmes such as GMP, SSOP and HACCP.

Nguyễn Trung Thành, director of the Sub-Department of Cultivation and Plant Protection under the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that the department would have propaganda and guide farmers, cooperatives and enterprises to register to be granted codes for planting regions and packaging facilities. That will help Quảng Ninh agricultural products have favourable conditions to export to foreign markets.

Quảng Ninh also promotes digital transformation by offering high-quality agricultural products to the e-commerce platform, contributing to improving the income of farmers and enterprises. As a result, their products are sold on e-commerce sites and trading centres, including custard apple, lychee, dragon fruit, pomelo, sticky rice, oyster sauce and fish sauce.

Meanwhile, Đông Triều Town builds a brand and a set of brand identities for Đông Triều custard apple. Many custard apple gardens have been recognised to meet VietGAP standards and have been granted codes. Accordingly, the Đông Triều custard apple is issued with a QR code and an anti-counterfeit stamp which help functional agencies and consumers to trace the origin and the process of growing and harvesting this fruit.

Currently, some essential agricultural products of Đông Triều are offered on e-commerce platforms such as Sendo, Voso and Cuccu. It is also building an e-commerce website to support farmers and enterprises consuming their products.

With the standardisation of production and consumption, almost all agricultural products of Quảng Ninh have advantages in the market at home and abroad, step by step approaching strict foreign markets.

The Vietnam-Australia Group's high-tech seed production complex in Quảng Ninh. To digitise production, the company has invested in food production lines, modern automatic water purification systems and an automatic shrimp feeding system. VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Vân

Digital transformation has also been applied in aquaculture, such as in the Vietnam-Australia Group's high-tech seed production complex in Quảng Ninh in Tân Lập Commune, Ðầm Hà District, with an area of about 170ha. To digitise production, the company has invested in food production lines, modern automatic water purification systems and an automatic shrimp feeding system. Besides, shrimp seed has been coded to ensure traceability, parents, farming location and time of sale.

BIM Food Joint Stock Company is implementing a 128-ha high-tech shrimp farming project in Ðại Bình Commune, which is expected to produce more than 250 million units of shrimp seed per year.

Bắc Việt Fisheries Cooperative expands production to 7 million tonnes of fish and oyster seed per year for the market. VNS