About 10,000 hectares of rice growing land in areas regularly facing droughts and floods in the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang will be used to cultivate other crops this year.

The area of land for rice farming in the locality was cut from 235,625 hectares in 2013 to 230,350 hectares in 2014 in order to increase the efficiency of agricultural production in a sustainable manner.

This year, Tien Giang has zoned off about 43,560 hectares of land for crops with 4,570 hectares for corn and more than 85,600 hectares for perennial plants.

Meanwhile, the area of orchards has increased to nearly 72,000 hectares, over 3,200 hectares more than last year’s figure.

Notably, the province is implementing new models which combine rice cultivation and fish and shrimp breeding in some flooded and coastal districts.

According to Nguyen Van Hai, who is in charge of agriculture and rural development in Tan Phu Dong district, the model, which was conducted on an area of about 550 hectares in the district, helps local farmers earn more than 60 million VND (2,820 USD) per ha each year, three times higher than their income from rice farming.

In Cho Gao district, which houses nearly 3,000 hectares of dragon transformed from rice land, farmers pocket nearly 300 million VND per ha per year from growing this fruit, five time higher than that from rice farming.-VNA