Vietnam is ready to share experience and boost cooperation with countries in agriculture and rural development, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has said.

He made the statement while attending the second Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change, which opened in Hanoi on September 6.

Dung praised the conference’s theme, ‘Hunger for Action’, with its focus on discussing practical issues and defining suitable and effective strategies to develop eco-friendly agriculture as well as promoting sustainable development and green growth.

According to the PM, agriculture plays an important role and is always seen as a top priority in Vietnam ’s socio-economic development strategy.

Over the past years, Vietnam ’s agricultural sector has recorded many considerable achievements, especially in food and seafood production and industrial crop cultivation, he said, adding that the country has now become the world’s second largest rice exporter.

In the new period of development, to implement its 2011-2020 socio-economic development strategy, Vietnam set a target of developing agriculture in a comprehensive, modern and sustainable manner, with large goods production scale and high productivity, quality, efficiency and competitiveness, ensuring national food security and meeting domestic consumption and export demands, he said.

Vietnam is forecast to be one of the countries to be hardest hit by climate change, especially sea level rise, which is a big threat to agricultural production.

Therefore, to realise the above-mentioned target, Vietnam is actively restructuring its agricultural sector, focusing on well exploiting potential areas, speeding up scientific and technological research and application in production, reorganising production in combination with processing industry development and goods consumption, as well as strengthening environmental protection, he said.

“We are ready to cooperate with countries and relevant international organisations in developing pilot models on green agriculture in Vietnam ,” Dung stressed.

Together with the mobilisation and effective use of domestic resources, Vietnam plans to step up international integration and cooperation in order to create a favourable environment for attracting overseas resources for development, he said.

The PM stressed that Vietnam wants to receive more assistance and cooperation from countries and international organisations in the cause of national construction and development.

The conference is jointly organised by the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Dutch Government, the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It has drawn the participation of over 500 delegates from 150 countries and more than 20 international organisations.-VNA