Sustainable agro-project benefits 27,650 farmers in Can Tho

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

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

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

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

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

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

As many as 16 cooperatives in Vinh Thanh, Thoi Lai and Co Do districts of Can Tho have joined the project. They have been provided aid worth in excess of 70 billion VND (over 3 million USD) to build infrastructure and purchase equipment for post-harvest processes.

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

After two years of implementation of the project in the Mekong Delta, the total area of rice in the model purchased by enterprises was 23,000ha out of 50,000ha of the project's target and profit increased by 14 percent.

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

VnSAT, part of the World Bank’s national cooperation strategy, is implemented in five Central Highlands provinces and eight Mekong Delta localities from 2015 to 2020 with a total capital of more than 300 million USD, of which 230 million USD comes from the bank’s preferential loans. 

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