Hanoi’s agricultural sector needs to create large-scale centralised production areas so as to improve farmers’ income and reach an annual agricultural growth of two percent.

Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Nguyen Xuan Viet made the demand at a conference in Hanoi on January 8 reviewing the sector’s performance and setting tasks for 2014.

To this end, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development plans to renovate agricultural services and enhance the effectiveness of land, labour, technique and material use, bringing the agro-foresty-fishery production value to 230 million VND (10,900 USD) per hectare from the current 212 million VND.

In particular, Hanoi will zone 204,000 hectares of farm land for rice cultivation with an output of 1.2 million tonnes in 2014.

In terms of animal husbandry, the city will increase its livestock to 150,000 cows (including 13,500 milk cows), 1.4 million pigs and 20 million fowls.

Despite difficulties caused by harsh weather, disease and the economic downturn, Hanoi’s agro-forestry-fishery production value in 2013 rose by 1.3 percent from last year to 38 trillion VND (1.8 billion USD).-VNA