Hanoi (VNA)– After five years of restructuring, the agricultural sector has recorded numerousachievements in improving its production structure and effectiveness, while thestrength of each locality has been optimised and many major agriculturalproducts improved their competitiveness in the market.

The structure ofagricultural products for export has changed in the direction of increasing theratio of advantageous products such as aquatic products, vegetable, fruits,wood and forestry products, and decreasing those with rising supply sources,including rice.

So far, localities,especially those in climate change-affected regions, have replaced 627,700hectares of ineffective rice cultivation with aquatic, fruit tree and cropfarms with higher economic value.

Many localities have developedmassive fields for the cultivation of rice, vegetable and flower in line withvalue chain, along with concentrated industrial and fruit tree regions.

Alongside, plantvarieties and cultivation techniques have been improved to enhance the qualityand added value of the products, therefore the productivity and quality ofmajor products, including rice, dragon fruit, lychee, longan, grapefruit andtea, have increased.

In the breedingsector, the number of large farms has risen from 8,796 in 2013 to 15,096 in2017, with strong growth of high technology industrial breeding with closed production-sellingprocess, meeting domestic demand and export.

In the forestry area, anaverage of 23,000 hectares of forest, 90 percent of which being production one,have been planted every year. The ratio of controlled and origin certifiedvarieties have reached 85 percent, up 13 percent compared to that in 2013.

Wood production fromplanted forests more than doubled to 18 million cubic metres in 2017 from 8million cubic metres in 2013, meeting about 80 percent of the demand formaterial wood. Profit of forest farmers has risen 25-30 percent.

In the aquatic sector,localities have expanded concentrated shrimp and fish farming using high andenvironmental-friendly technologies, with focus on shrimp and tra fish.Fisheries logistics services have been re-organised, while the model ofproduction in chains, and production team and groups have shown theirefficiency.

Thanks to strongrestructuring, agricultural sector’s market has been expanded to 180 countriesand territories. In the first seven months of 2018, the export revenue of thesector reached 22.2 billion USD, a rise of 7.8 percent year on year.

According to Ministerof Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong, in the 2017-2020period, the planning, strategy and advantages of each sector and locality havebeen reviewed and classified into three levels: national (including productswith export value from 1 billion USD, pork and cattle meat), provincial andlocal, in association with the building of new-style rural area in the model of“One Commune – One Product”.

He said that agriculturalproducts will be adjusted in accordance with the market demand and climatechange adaptation, adding that green and organic agriculture will beencouraged.

Nguyen Ngoc Oai,Acting Director of the Vietnam Directorate of Fisheries, with the target of addedvalue rise of at least 5 percent per year, the fishery sector will encouragethe upgrading of processing factories to optimise productivity and reduce cost.

The sector willstrengthen the processing of products with high added value such as shrimp, tuna,tra fish, seaweed, mollusk, and by-products, while applying advanced technologyin processing and storing.

At the same time,Nguyen Quoc Tri, head of the Vietnam Administration of Forestry, said that inorder to fulfil the target of 42 percent in forest coverage in 2020, the sectorwill concentrate on sustainable and effective management and exploiting of naturalforests in association with protection of forest and biodiversity.

Meanwhile, the modelof agri-silviculture, or the combination of growing of agricultural crops withsimultaneously raised and protected forest crops, will be applied, along with thedevelopment of herbal plants, the utilization of forestry products besides woodand eco-tourism, he added.

Tri added thatconcentrated material regions for wood processing and paper production will be developed,while forestry production will be implemented in value chains.-VNA