Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - One of the mainachievements of Vietnam’s agricultural restructuring plan over the last fiveyears is the formation of three product categories – national key products,local key products and those under the programme “one village, one product”.

National key agricultural products are those with an exportvalue of at least 1 billion USD each. Local key products are those that make upa major proportion of agricultural production and have great potential forexpansion and technological application. The “one village, one product”programme focuses on special local products to ensure they are preserved andpromoted.

Agriculture expert Hoang Trong Thuy said the agriculturalrestructuring based on key product categories and the flexible priority givento the categories had created major changes for agricultural production.

In the past, Vietnam gave priority to rice production,followed by aquaculture products, fruit and vegetables.

Now, seeing the drop in rice prices, the country had changedits priority to aquaculture, fruit and vegetables.
   
“The change helped generate the export value of fruit andvegetables last year to 3.45 billion USD with a year-on-year increase of 40.5percent,” Thuy said, adding that for the first time, Vietnam’s fruit andvegetable export value had exceeded crude oil.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuongsaid that during the restructuring process, localities nationwide had turneddisadvantages into advantages.

For example, the northern province of Son La had shifted fromrice to longan, mango and citrus trees in mountainous areas.

In the southern province of Tay Ninh, where weatherconditions are unfavourable for farming, local authorities advised enterprisesto study and invest in production areas as well as food processing plants.

Cuong said that one of the positive results of restructuringwas that more attention had been paid to post-harvest processing.

This year, ten processing plants had been built across thecountry.
However, according to experts, restructuring remained slowand was not ready for climate and market changes. For example, many localitieshad not identified key products and farmers preferred growing goods en-masswithout considering about local planning or market demand.

Thuy said despite the fact the country’s agriculturalproduction had grown, it still faced challenges including complicated marketchanges and modest market forecasting ability.

These challenges resulted in falling prices or oversupply offarming products, which negatively affects farmers’ businesses and incomes, Thuysaid.

He also said that technological applications in agriculturalproduction/ processing and storage were limited.

In 2013, then Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung approved a project on agriculturalrestructuring to raise added value and sustainable development.

Vietnamese farm produce are now available in 180 countriesand territories across the world. Agricultural products have earned the country157.49 billion USD in the five-year period.

Last year, Vietnam earned 36.37 billion USD thanks toexporting farm produce, including 8.32 billion USD from aquaculture productsand 3.45 billion USD from fruit and vegetables.

Export value in the first quarter of this year hit 8.7billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 9.6 percent. Vietnam expects to gain 40-40.5billion USD from farm produce exports this year.-VNS/VNA