Hanoi (VNA)🔯 - In recent years, the crop industry has demonstrated its crucial role in ensuring national food security, job creation, and increasing farmer incomes. It has become a key production area of the agriculture sector, with many competitive products that help increase export value.

According to the Department of Crop Production under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), many technical advancements, new varieties, and effective cultivation processes that adapt to climate change have been recognised and applied in production, contributing to controlling diseases and ensuring productivity and yield, and economic efficiency. Many localities have focused on expanding large-scale production, applying high technology, organic cultivation methods, and environmentally friendly practices to ensure biological safety and disease control. These efforts have met the increasingly high demand for quality and food safety for domestic consumption and export. Statistics show that in 2023, crop production value grew by 3%, accounting for 63% of the total value of agricultural production, with annual crops increasing by 2.22% and perennial crops rising by 4.26%. The export value of crop products reached 26 billion USD, up 15% year-on-year. Rice, coffee, cashews, fruits and vegetables, and rubber had an export value of over 2 billion USD each. The average production value per hectare of cultivated land reached 125 million VND (over 5,000 USD). Last year, the Prime Minister issued a decision approving a strategy to develop plant cultivation to 2050, aiming to turn it into a complete and professional technical-economic sector with highly competitive products, meeting requirements in food safety, security, and other needs of the economy, securing high export values. The strategy is expected to be a motivation for the cultivation sector to reap more success in the future. Specifically, the growth rate of plant cultivation production is expected to reach 2.2-2.5% per year by 2030, while the average of added value in the crop processing industry is 8-10% per year. The rate of crop product value produced under the cooperative and linkage forms is hoped to reach 30-35% of the total value of the sector, while the average value of crop products per hectare of farming land is expected to hit 150-160 million VND. At the same time, the rice farming area will be kept stable at 3.56 million ha with an expected output of over 35 million tonnes of the grain. Meanwhile, the area of specialty coffee will rise to 11,500 ha by 2030 with an output of about 5,000 tonnes. By 2050, cultivation is hoped to become a modern technical economic sector among the top in the region and the world. Rice farming will become a high-tech industry that will include organic practices to remain environmentally friendly./.