Focusing on raising income for rural residents
More than 5 years ago, Mr. Tran Anh Dung (Bau Tre hamlet, Binh An commune, Long Thanh district) grew many kinds of fruit tree on over 3 ha of his garden. Due to using old seeds and inappropriate, the crops were not well grown resulting an unstable life for his family.
After researching and seeing the benefits in plant restructuring from the district, Mr. Trung decided to cut down his complex garden to grow only 2 types of durian: Ri6 and Mongthong. At the same time, with the help of Long Thanh – Nhon Trach Plant Protection Station, Mr. Trung applied many advance farming methods on his durian garden. Especially, in order to improve irrigation and reduce work, Mr. Trung invested 100 million VND on building saving irrigation system for the whole garden. Thanks to the synchronous investment, his durian garden’s productivity increased significantly. The latest crop in 2016 reached over 20 ton/ha (before, it was only 13 ton/ha) which gave him over 300 million VND/ha in profit.
Residents enjoying walking on their new, nice and spacious road in hamlet 6, An Phuoc commune, Long Thanh district
Meanwhile, in Nhon Trach district, residents are encouragingly investing on many hi-tech farming models and they are step by step taking effects in raising income for people. A highlighted model is growing melon in plastic screen house project by Mr. Kieu Hieu (Vinh Thanh commune). Growing under a closed process using Japanese technology in a completely inside the screen house, all plants shall be protected from the impacts of the external environment, resulting in high productivity. “My family has an over 3,700m2 of plastic film house growing melon, which gives 4 crops a year. The average productivity is 5-6 ton per crop, with the current market price of 30,000 VND/kg, my family can earn 150-180 million VND”, said Mr. Hieu.
Developing hi-tech farming, urban farming by forming focus specialized farming areas to change planting method, apply new seeds and science technology in producing are the prioritized directions of Long Thanh and Nhon Trach in building their NRA program.
Following those direction, so far, Long Thanh district has formed 22 focus areas for production with 6 main plants: rice, corn, wheat, vegetable, durian, cashew; with the total area of 6,000 ha. About breeding, the district also formed focus area for breeding with the total area of over 126 ha, including 185 ranches for industrial production, product value per 1 ha of both planting and breeding was 122 million VND/year (increased 57 million more than in 2010)
At the same time, Nhon Trach district has basically formed focus areas for farm production such as: Ong Keo sugarcane stock area, Dong Nai riverside rice production area, Long Tho and Phu Thanh vegetable production area, brackish water fishery area. Beside, in order to stabilize and step by step improve product’s quality and value, Nhon Trach district People’s Committee called agriculture processing Units for cooperation to conduct the large field project and the production to consumption linking project. So far, in the district, there have been 3 Units joining the linking project with the production such as sugarcane, papaya, mango, herb…increasing the production value per 1 ha of farming area to over 115 million VND/year (increased 86% - equivalent to 53.3 million VND/ha/year - more than in 2011).
Focusing on agriculture development has helped improving farmers’ life progressively. So far, per capita income (PCI) of rural resident in two districts has reached over 38 million VND/year (10 million more than in 2011).
Currently, PCI of Long Thanh district is 40.6 million VND/year, increased 206% more than in 2010. Meanwhile, PCI of Nhon Trach district is 38.5 million VND/year, increased 72% more than in 2011.
Changing the face of rural areas
After 5 years building the NRA program, Long Thanh and Nhon Trach districts achieved positive result as expected; the face of rural area in the 2 district has had positive transformation. Transportation infrastructure was completed, facilitating rural resident in their production investments
Developing hi-tech farming is the orientation in building NRA in Nhon Trach and Long Thanh districts. Photo: Farmer growing melon inside plastic screen house in Nhon Trach.
“Before, when the road surface was not concrete, it was always marshy on rainy days and dusty on sunny days, causing difficulties on people’s daily life and their transportation. Since the NRA program was built, traffic roads were developed, facilitating people in transporting farming products and production material conveniently”, happily said Ms. Mai Thi Mai, resident of Binh Son commune, Long Thanh district.
The key to the success NRA program of Long Thanh and a Nhon Trach was the aggregate of many accurate and practical undertakings. In which, the accurate implementation of raising social capital from resident and enterprises’ supports was the most important. In 5 years, the total capital raised for the NRA program was over 9 trillion VND in Long Thanh (including 21% of the state budget, the rest was from the social capital) and 11 trillion VND in Nhon Trach (including 80% of resident and enterprises’ supports)
According to Mr. Ngo The An – Chairman of People’s Committee of Long Thanh district, when starting the NRA program, we specified that the main support should be the social capital. So the local authorities encouraged people and enterprises’ supports. However, the supports should be volunteer, it was not compulsory for people to support with certain amount or continuously; by showing people the importance of project, they would understand and support voluntarily.
Similarly, Nhon Trach also focused on propagating people and enterprises the purpose of the NRA program first, then encouraging them to support voluntarily, without complication.
By using the method, so far, 100% of road under the district management, inter commune road and intra commune road were asphalt coated. 53.4% of hamlet road, laneway and main field roads in Long Thanh were also asphalt coated; In Nhon Trach, it is 38.9% and rest were concrete roads.
Essential infrastructures such as electricity, road, school, local station were also synchronously constructed, contributing to the improvement of rural people’s life.
In Long Thanh so far, 11/13 communes were officially recognized as the NRA, equivalent to 84%. (Suoi Trau commune were not able to follow the NRA program since most of the commune area belongs to the Long Thanh International Airport Plan. In Nhon Trach, 10/12 communes were also officially recognized as the NRA, equivalent to 83.3%.
Tung Van
