Hai Duong seeks to promote agricultural product processing, sale

Hai Duong (VNA) – A conference was held in the northern province of Hai Duong on October 26 to seek ways to help promote its farm produce processing and consumption.

According to Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Nguyen An Cuong, Hai Duong province owns diverse agricultural products with an increasing scale of production.

Currently, the province has 12,000 hectares of rice farms with an output of 700,000 tonnes per year, along with over 31,000 hectares of vegetables with an annual output of 720,000 tonnes.

At the same time, Hai Duong is also home to 21,000 hectares of orchards, and 732 livestock farms which produce about 140,000 tonnes of meat per year. Aquaculture area of Hai Duong is over 11,000 hectares with an output of about 74,000 tonnes each year, noted Cuong.

However, he pointed the difficulties of the local agricultural sector, including small scale of production facilities and limitations in trade promotion, market expansion, product designs and brand building.

Tran Van Quan, Director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, proposed the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) support Hai Duong to lure more investors in agriculture and agricultural processing, thus turning the province intoa farm produce storage and processing hub of the Red River Delta region.

Pham Van Duy, Vice Director of the Agro Processing and Market Development Authority under the MARD, said Hai Duong has suffered high post-harvesting losses at 10-20 percent. Meanwhile, 95 percent of the province’s farm produce are sold to the market without being processed.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Tran Thanh Nam said that the Government’s supporting policies for investors to invest in agriculture is a good chance for Hai Duong. He added that with its favourable location in the Hanoi-Hai Phong-Quang Ninh economic triangle, Hai Duong has sufficient conditions to become a farm produce processing centre.

He suggested that the province enhance the promotion of its farm produce trademarks in and outside the country, while investing more in agricultural product storing and packing facilities at production areas to reduce post-harvest losses.

Meanwhile, the province should apply technology in the sector and coordinate with other localities to form large-scale commercial production areas and connectivity with major cities across the country, he added.

Experts at the event introduced new technologies in farm produce processing and storage, along with recommendations on measures to reform the sector and attract more investment in agriculture.

At the conference, a number of agricultural product processing and selling firms signed agreements with local cooperatives and production facilities./.