Bac Giang (VNA) – The northern province of Bac Giang is steppingup the application of science and technology in agricultural production toimprove its value and increase farmers’ income.

The province hopes that its quality rice areawill reach 55,000 hectares, and the output will be nearly 357,500 tonnes,meeting both domestic consumption and export demands.

The total area of fruit trees will be about 55,000 hectares, with focus ongrowing lychee, citrus (orange, pomelo), longan, custard apple, pineapple andguava following VietGAP and GlobalGAP standards.

By 2030, the province will also expand its vegetableproduction area to 28,000 hectares, which can produce an output of about554,400 tonnes. Of the total, the area of safe vegetables grown according to VietGAP standards will be 12,500 hectares, with an output of around 272,500tonnes.

At the same time, the locality will maintain the breeding of1-1.2 million pigs, and 22-25 million poultry.

To that end, Bac Giang will promote the transfer and application of scientificand technological advances in agricultural, forestry and fishery production.Accordingly, the province focuses on applying good agricultural practices(VietGAP, GlobalGAP), clean production technology and biotechnology; developorganic agriculture; ensure food safety and hygiene; and protect theenvironment.

The locality will encourage the building of ecological andenvironment-friendly agricultural models such as organic agriculture and closed-loopcircular agriculture.

In addition, Bac Giang will strengthen mechanisation inproduction, harvesting, preservation and processing to improve theproductivity, quality and competitiveness of agricultural products. The focus is to connectwith other sectors and fields to form smart agricultural production adaptive toclimate change and diseases.

Since 2021, Bac Giang has paid attention to applying scienceand technology to agricultural production. The province has researched andpiloted the plantation of new pure rice species with high yield and goodquality suitable to the growing areas and ecology of the province. The idea behind the move is to select two species with the best yield and quality for both domesticconsumption and export.

In addition, the province has transferred, received andmastered 14 techniques for growing vegetables. Notably, it has successfullybuilt a model of growing vegetables in simple net houses following VietGAPstandards. It has also established a product quality safety monitoring system, issuedVietGAP certificate for safe vegetables, and built a model to preserve vegetables using environmental control technology, with a scale of 100-200tonnes per store.

Bac Giang has also developed animal husbandry by expandingthe application of high technologies, developing environmentally friendlyfarms, and ensuring disease safety and traceability.

The provincial science and technology sector has consultedthe provincial People's Committee and the Ministry of Science and Technology toout scientific and technological research and application tasks at the nationaland provincial levels on the conservation and development of precious livestockbreeds with high economic value. These include the six-claw chicken in Son Dong; snakeheadin Hiep Hoa; trionychidae turtle in Viet Yen district, Lang Giang district, BacGiang city, and white horse in Luc Ngan.

The province also boasts 80,000 hectares of production forests. Bac Giang will promote the mechanisation and application of science and technology; improve productivity, quality and efficiency of production forests in the direction of optimising the production system, and the value chain of forest products.

Bac Giang will invest in intensive farming and apply techniques to improve the productivity and quality of forests, and plant new varieties with high yield and quality.

In 2022, the production value of the agriculture, forestryand fishery sector in Bac Giang province increased by 2.1% compared to theprevious year to reach nearly 37.70 trillion VND./.