Agricultural restructuring plan ratified

Illustration photo

The plan targets the sector’s GDP growth of 3% per year by 2020. Average labor productivity is expected to expand by 3.5% per annum and the proportion of labor in agriculture will decrease below 40%. About 22% of agricultural workers will be trained. 

The income of rural laborers will increase at least 1.8 times compared to 2015 and 50% of communes will become new rural areas.

As many as 5,000 cooperatives and unions of agricultural cooperatives will operate and most residents in rural areas get access to hygienic water.

Three levels of products will be classified including the national key products, provincial and local key products and local specialty products.  

The plan also calls for more applications of science and technology in the sector to create high-quality varieties, adopting intensive farming, reducing the use of pesticides, replacing ineffective rice cultivation land to grow other crops, and promoting aquatic breeding.

The country will also develop household livestock, organic and ecological animal husbandry, and value production chains in addition to building brands, reorganizing the slaughtering system to ensure food safety and hygiene and environmental protection, inspecting and controlling diseases effectively, and tightening the examination of the use of veterinary drugs and additives in the field. The livestock industry aims for annual production growth of 4.5-5%.

The seafood sector will promote offshore fishing and invest in modernizing processing equipment and storage on board to reduce losses, with growth of 4.5-5% per year expected.

By Thuy Dung