The Đông Cao General Service Cooperative in Đông Cao Village, Tráng Việt Commune, Mê Linh District applies an automatic irrigation system to care for vegetables that meet three-star OCOP standards. — Photos courtesy of the Hà Nội Department of Agriculture and Rural Development

HÀ NỘI — Mê Linh District has focused on the one commune one product (OCOP) programme during recent years and now, it has 75 products recognised as OCOP.

The products include 24 with four stars and 51 with three stars.

This is a favourable circumstance for Mê Linh District to develop agricultural production on a large scale to help improve people's incomes.

Mê Linh District has focused on maximising investment in infrastructure and reorganising agricultural production towards modernity.

It also promotes science and technology applications to increase farmers' incomes.

The district has built many production and consumption chains for key agricultural products, including for vegetables, fruits and flowers at the Đông Cao General Service Cooperative; for Đông Cao red pomelo in Tráng Việt Commune; and the Khánh Phong clean fruit production and consumption chain in Tiến Thịnh Commune.

Local farmers said that most products after being granted OCOP stars have higher value among consumers.

Specifically, the Khánh Phong Agricultural Service Cooperative in 2020 put four types of fruits to evaluation and classification. Two of them, which are guava and papaya, reached the four-star standard. The remaining two, apple and pomelo, reached three stars.

Director of the cooperative Nguyễn Thế Lâm said that the OCOP programme had helped the cooperative's products reach their value and position in the market.

For instance, during the guava season, many people had to sell guava at the cheap price of VNĐ5,000-10,000 (US$0.2-0.4) per kilo, but the cooperative's products could still be sold at supermarkets and food stores for VNĐ25,000 ($1.04) per kilo.

The Coordination Office of the New-Style Rural Development Programme of Hà Nội evaluated the OCOP programme of Mê Linh District last year.

Many farmers in Mê Linh District boldly apply high technology in production, and build OCOP products that bring them billions of đồng per year (VNĐ1 billion equals about $41,600).

Nguyễn Tiến Dũng's family in Đại Thịnh Commune is a good example.

Owning a total area of ​​nearly 129,000sq.m, his family used 5,000sq.m on growing Phalaenopsis with high-tech applications.

The flowers are grown in greenhouses and net houses with automatic irrigation systems.

Dũng’s farm provides the market with 100,000-120,000 orchids of all kinds each year, with a turnover of about VNĐ7 billion ($293,200).

With this result, his family is aiming to build the farm into a high-tech agricultural production area combining eco-tourism services to create a new sightseeing site for tourists.

Dũng said, "In 2021, the Phalaenopsis orchid products of my farm were rated OCOP four stars by the Hà Nội authorities. Thereby, many customers know and purchased them, helping stabilise the model and expand the consumption market."

Towards the goal of building a farm into a high-tech agricultural production area with ecotourism services, Dũng founded the Tiến Tuấn Trading and Tourism Co Ltd.

The model now creates jobs for 20 workers with an average salary of VNĐ5-10 million ($209-420) per person per month.

In Yên Bài Village, Tự Lập Commune, farmer Lê Văn Ngà bought land, which had been used to grow rice but had low economic profit, to grow lilies with on 29ha.

Ngà said that the model has an average output of more than 1 million sprigs of flowers and a revenue of VNĐ26 billion ($1.1 million) per year.

It creates stable income for 20 local farmers.

Through innovative thinking and ways to develop agricultural production in the direction of modernity, actively applying science and technology to save costs, improving productivity and crop output to have high incomes, Ngà has encouraged many households in the locality to participate in transforming crops with different types of flowers.

Representatives visit the lily growing model bringing high economic efficiency to farmer Lê Văn Ngà in Yên Bài Village, Tự Lập Commune in Mê Linh District.

Chairman of the Mê Linh District People's Committee Hoàng Anh Tuấn said that the district had issued a scheme to implement the OCOP programme in the period of 2021-25.

The programme has a development orientation that not only meets quantity requirements but also increases in quality to gradually develop according to international standards for export.

The target is to develop, upgrade, evaluate and classify 20 to 30 OCOP products or more per year.

The programme will build an OCOP product management database, and organise annual trade promotion events to connect domestic and international product consumption.

It will periodically monitor the quality of OCOP products through quality testing and apply quality certifications according to advanced standards such as Vietnamese Good Agricultural Practices (VietGAP), Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point System (HACCP) and International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).

In the coming time, Mê Linh District will continue to review and select products with local characteristics and specialties to develop them into OCOP products.

It strives that by 2025, the district will have 120-140 products that are recognised as OCOP products of three or four stars or more.

Nguyễn Văn Chí, Deputy Chief of the Coordination Office of the New-Style Countryside Development Programme of Hà Nội, said that Mê Linh District needed to promote the practical benefits of the OCOP programme to help develop the new rural areas so that enterprises, cooperatives, production and business households will voluntarily register to participate.

After having products that meet OCOP criteria, the district needs to connect and distribute OCOP products to supermarkets, stores and trade centres.

At the same time, Mê Linh District should focus on building showrooms to introduce and sell OCOP products in the area, and coordinate with departments of Hà Nội to call for more support to implement the OCOP programme. — VNS

This article is published under the coordination of the Coordination Office of the New-Style Countryside Development Programme in Hà Nội.