Viet Nam sets itself to double agricultural output over next five
(12/16/2003 -- 16:51GMT+7)
Ha Noi, Dec. 16 (VNA)- Viet Nam plans to launch an initiative to increase the agricultural output value to 31 million VND per ha in the next five years. The current yield is only 17 million VND.
Each ha of agricultural land, therefore, will yield almost 20 million VND on average.
The drive will thus improve rural farmers' incomes, said the Agricultural Economics Institute.
To that end, Viet Nam has to shift an estimated 23 percent of tilled land to aquaculture, thus bringing over half of the total area of agricultural land to earn an average of 47 million VND or 3,000 USD per ha.
Viet Nam's agricultural output value now averages just 17 million VND per ha of land, mostly due to low production values by farms which made a mere 11 million VND per ha a year. Meanwhile, the aquaculture sector can easily earn 70 million VND per ha of water surface per year on that same land.
Once the target is achieved, farmers in the Red River Delta will earn some 40 million VND a household or 10 million VND per person a year. The figures in the Mekong Delta will reach 50 million VND and 12 million VND, respectively.
Meanwhile, annual incomes in the northwestern mountainous region will be estimated at just 20 million VND for a farmer household and 5 million VND per head.
So far, up to 2,300 villages are listed as below the poverty line, where a household lives on just 7-8 million VND a year.
