The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Quang Ninh provincial People’s Committee and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) co-celebrated the 34 th World Food Day and FAO’s 69th founding anniversary on October 14 in Dong Trieu district, northern Quang Ninh province.

This year’s World Food Day explored the theme “Family farming: feeding the world, caring for the earth”, which is significant to Vietnam since the country’s 10 million farming households with 30 million laborers, or 70 percent of the workforce, contributed only 20 percent of the national GDP.

According to Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh, the Government is implementing an agriculture restructuring programme to help farmers increase their incomes, with a major focus on applying scientific-technological approaches and restructuring production, including the provision of preferential loans and investments in education and scientific research.

Speaking at the event, FAO Representative in Vietnam Jong-Ha Bae said in Vietnam and many countries all over the world, farming households’ role in economics, society, culture and the environment is decisive and needs to be strengthened through renovations.

On this occasion, the UN Women Country Representative in Vietnam, Shoko Ishikawa, awarded prizes for winners of the national writing competition “Woman’s role in family farming cultivation”.-VNA