Vocational training for farmers has yet to be effectively integrated with the national target programme on building new-style rural areas and restructuring the agriculture sector.

So far, this work has only concentrated on publicising farming knowledge and techniques to growers and breeders, a conference in Hanoi heard on May 7.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat acknowledged the restrictions in the field, citing the fact that nearly 25 million rural people are working in agriculture, while another 600,000 young people become old enough to take part in the sector every year. However, vocational training facilities are currently able to provide their services for only five million people, Phat said.

He suggested focusing training on high-tech professions such as intensive cultivation, animal husbandry and agro-forestry-seafood processing.

More than 662,000 rural workers nationwide received vocational training between 2010 and 2013.

Over 88 percent of the trainees took new jobs or continued with their current ones at a higher income.

The "Vocational training for rural workers until 2020” project, which was approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in November 2009, targets providing vocational training to about one million rural workers a year on average.-VNA