Hà Nội builds safe agricultural production areas

Experts from the Hà Nội Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Hà Nội Agriculture Promotion Fund visit a chicken raising model for clean eggs with high productivity in Liên Châu Commune, Thanh Oai District in Hà Nội. — Photo courtesy of the Hà Nội Sub-department of Agricultural, Forestry and Fisheries Quality Management

HÀ NỘI — Hà Nội’s agricultural sector has strengthened safe agricultural areas to ensure sustainable production and provide a source of clean food for domestic and foreign consumers living in the capital city.

Nguyễn Giáp Đông, head of the Ba Vì District’s Economic Division, said that the district currently maintained a safe tea production area spanning 1,550ha and productivity of 10.5 tonnes per hectare per year. The output for the whole year is estimated at 16,275 tonnes of fresh buds, worth VNĐ350 million (US$14,900) per hectare per year.

To help farmers maintain and expand safe production areas, Ba Vì District has supported and created favourable conditions for localities to innovate technology, ensure raw material sources and well manage tea quality.

It builds trademarks, product brands protected by intellectual property; builds good models of safe tea production and processing following Vietnamese Good Agricultural Practises (VietGAP) process.

Thanks to that, the district has successfully built the Ba Vì tea brand.

In Đông Anh District, Nguyễn Anh Dũng, deputy chairman of the district People’s Committee, said that the district had 1,180ha of vegetable production area including more than 500ha of large-scale safe vegetable production.

To control safe vegetable products’ quality, the district has promoted education to raise people’s awareness about limiting pesticides. As the result, the amount of pesticides decreased by about 15 per cent compared to previous years. Farmers have learned to use organic fertilisers, herbs and ensure food safety.

Regarding Hà Nội’s plans for safe agricultural production areas, Nguyễn Thị Thu Hằng, director of the Hà Nội Sub-department of Agricultural, Forestry and Fisheries Quality Management, said that the whole city currently maintained over 5,000ha of safe vegetables areas including 43 vegetable planting models applying the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) with a total area of 1,700ha.

Hà Nội also maintaines more than 1,300ha of vegetables, fruits and tea according to VietGAP standards, 181ha of aquaculture in the direction of VietGAP, 88 livestock centres applying VietGAP standards and nearly 50ha of farms following organic agriculture standards.

Besides, Hà Nội continues to develop 141 chains of safe agricultural products manufacture and consumption.

Safety-oriented production not only helps farmers sell at prices which are 10-15 per cent higher than traditional products, but also helps sectors manage quality of products sold on the market.

To create sources of clean and safe food from large-scale production areas, Nguyễn Mạnh Hồng, director of the Đức Phát Hi-tech Agriculture Cooperative in Yên Mỹ Commune, Thanh Trì District, said that Hà Nội needed to invest in infrastructure in collective production areas, support cooperatives and enterprises in capital with preferential interest rates when building safe production farms.

The capital city should also open training courses on high-tech application production, associate with enterprises to consume safe products, said Hồng.

Deputy chairman of the Ứng Hòa District People’s Committee Ngô Tiến Hoàng said that the district continued to create favourable conditions to attract more and more potential enterprises to invest in agricultural production, expanding the scale of farm production areas and high-quality rice areas.

The district will expand high-tech safe vegetables to 170ha, specialty fruit trees with brands in the market to 600ha, expand aquaculture areas in the direction of efficiency, sustainability, ecological environment protection in Hòa Lâm, Trầm Lộng and Trung Tú communes.

Director of the Hà Nội Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Chu Phú Mỹ said that in the future, Hà Nội’s agriculture sector would continue to work with local authorities to expand centralised production organisations together with high-tech applications, ecological agriculture, organic agriculture and advanced quality management systems.

The department will continue to guide and support enterprises to invest in agriculture, multiply safe production models, support farmers with capital from the Hà Nội Agricultural Promotion Fund to expand production scale, creating a source of clean food with clear origin to provide to consumers. — VNS