Can Tho (VNA) – Some 27,650 farmers in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho benefited from theVietnam Sustainable Agriculture Transformation project (VnSAT) over the lasttwo years, heard a meeting in the locality on April 17.

Addressing the event, Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Dao AnhDung highlighted the significance of the project, noting that the the largest officialdevelopment assistance agricultural project in the locality must be implementedin to bring maximum benefit to local farmers.

According to Dung, Can Tho was allocated about 210 billion VND (more than 9.2million USD) for the project, which is mainly used to invest in infrastructuredevelopment for farmers’ organisations and cooperatives.

Nguyen Thi Minh Hieu from the municipalDepartment of Agriculture and Rural Development, said as of April 2018, the VnSAT’smanagement board in Can Tho organised 550 training courses for 24,300 farmers.

Nearly 33,000 ha of cultivation land in the locality is usingsustainable rice cultivation solutions.

The model helps reduce production cost by 4 million VND per hectare andincrease profit by 6 million VND a hectare compared to other cultivation methods.

Asmany as 16 cooperatives in Vinh Thanh, Thoi Lai and Co Do districts of Can Tho havejoined the project. They have been provided aid worth in excess of 70 billionVND (over 3 million USD) to build infrastructure and purchase equipment forpost-harvest processes.

In 2018, VnSAT hopes to aid nearly 14,000 more local farmers, helping increase profitby 20 percent for each hectare of cultivation area. An additional 311 trainingcourses on farming techniques will be also held in the year.

After two years of implementation of the project in the Mekong Delta, thetotal area of rice in the model purchased by enterprises was 23,000ha out of50,000ha of the project's target and profit increased by 14 percent.

Specifically, averageprofit of areas of rice involved in the project in the region averagely increasedby 14 percent, from 33.1 million VND (1,454 USD) per hectare to 37.1 millionVND (1,630 USD) a hectare.

VnSAT, part of the World Bank’snational cooperation strategy, is implemented in five Central Highlandsprovinces and eight Mekong Delta localities from 2015 to 2020 with a totalcapital of more than 300 million USD, of which 230 million USD comes from thebank’s preferential loans. 

Its objectives are to help promote agriculturalrestructuring through increasing the sector’s institutional capacity, renewingsustainable cultivation methods and raising the value chain for rice productionin the Mekong Delta and coffee crops in the Central Highlands.-VNA