Dao ethnic women in Hà Nội's Ba Vì District working at a traditional medicine farm. Photo ktdt.vn

By Tố Như

HÀ NỘI – The Hà Nội Department of Agriculture and Rural Development is focusing on providing support for agricultural production development until 2025 under the national target programme for socio-economic development of ethnic minority and mountainous areas and for sustainable poverty reduction.

In terms of sustainable poverty reduction, support subjects include poor households, near-poor households, and households that have escaped poverty within the past 36 months, are currently engaged in agricultural production and have needs.

The department has co-ordinated with the People's committees of districts and towns to review and list 572 households in 12 districts and towns of Ba Vì, Chương Mỹ, Mê Linh, Mỹ Đức, Phú Xuyên, Phúc Thọ, Sóc Sơn, Thạch Thất, Thanh Oai, Thường Tín, Ứng Hòa and Sơn Tây registering with the programme to receive breeding cows.

So far, there are 125 households in 11 communes of four districts registering with projects of the programme in the period 2021 – 2023.

Specifically, 56 households participate in raising cows for breeding, 15 in raising buffalos for breeding, 24 in pigs for breeding, two registered for raising pigs for commercial pork, 17 engage in commercial chicken farming, and 17 in the goat farming model.

Support beneficiaries include poor households, near-poor households, and ethnic minorities in communes and villages in ethnic minority and mountainous areas in the city engaging in agricultural production and in need of support; as well as enterprises and co-operatives participating in value chains where 70 per cent or more of the total number of employees are ethnic minorities.

Based on the list of registrations to participate in the programme, businesses and co-operatives research support conditions, mechanisms and responsibilities when implementing linked production development along the value chain.

The department’s report shows that Hà Nội is among localities with a large agricultural land area, with more than 197,000ha, of which, agricultural production land is nearly 160,000ha.

Recently, the department has co-ordinated with localities to strengthen the application of science and technology in production, implement planting area codes, and ensure traceability, quality and food safety.

Along with that, Hà Nội is accumulating and concentrating land for large-scale production and high-tech application, creating conditions to attract businesses to invest in agricultural production as well as strengthen links between businesses, co-operatives and households to organise agricultural production according to VietGAP, GlobalGAP and organic standards and expand agriculture-tourism models.

Thanks to that, the agricultural production value achieves high growth and proactively provides a portion of clean and safe agricultural products to consumers in the city.

Production-consumption link promoted

Currently, Hà Nội’s agricultural production faces many difficulties and challenges.

Agricultural economic restructuring is still slow and not commensurate with the capital's potential and advantages. The production is still small and fragmented and lacks concentrated production areas for key commodity products.

Thus, investment attraction into the sector, especially in the chain linking production to consumption, is still low.

To maintain the pace of growth, the Hà Nội agricultural sector is implementing many solutions, focusing on linking production and consumption.

According to Director of the Hà Nội Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyễn Xuân Đại, the city is developing specialised agricultural areas associated with branding and tourism promotion to increase production value.

In 2023, the growth rate of agriculture, forestry and fishery increased by 2.74 per cent compared to the same period in 2022 and the production value of agriculture, forestry and fishery reached VNĐ41,681 billion (US$1.68 billion), an increase 2.71 per cent over the same period in 2022.

This year, the agricultural sector targets production growth of 2.5 – 3 per cent.

“Hà Nội chooses to invest in specialised agricultural models, suitable to the local land accumulation capacity,” said Hà Nội People’s Committee vice chairman Nguyễn Mạnh Quyền.

“In addition, the city also plans to form high-quality seedling areas of fruit trees, ornamental flowers and urban trees to meet the green urban development requirements of the capital and neighbouring provinces and cities,” said Quyền.

“Agricultural production areas, with technology and finance investment, will become centres of high-tech and agriculture,” he said.

“Hà Nội will promote agricultural development in the direction of increasing added value, replicating hi-tech agricultural models combining with tourism, as well as continuing to develop high-quality plant and animal seed production facilities to supply neighbouring provinces and cities and accelerate production-consumption linking models to ensure the supply of agricultural products for the city’s market,” he added. VNS