Hai Duong (VNA) – A conference was held in thenorthern province of Hai Duong on October 26 to seek ways to help promote its farmproduce processing and consumption.

According to Vice Chairman of the provincialPeople’s Committee Nguyen An Cuong, Hai Duong province owns diverseagricultural products with an increasing scale of production.

Currently, the province has 12,000 hectares of rice farmswith an output of 700,000 tonnes per year, along with over 31,000 hectares ofvegetables with an annual output of 720,000 tonnes.

At the same time, Hai Duong is also home to 21,000 hectaresof orchards, and 732 livestock farms which produce about 140,000 tonnes of meatper year. Aquaculture area of Hai Duong is over 11,000 hectares with an outputof about 74,000 tonnes each year, noted Cuong.

However, he pointed the difficulties of the localagricultural sector, including small scale of production facilities andlimitations in trade promotion, market expansion, product designs and brandbuilding.

Tran Van Quan, Director of the provincial Department of Agricultureand Rural Development, proposed the Ministry of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment (MARD) support Hai Duong to lure more investors in agriculture andagricultural processing, thus turning the province intoa farm produce storageand processing hub of the Red River Delta region.

Pham Van Duy, Vice Director of the Agro Processing and Market DevelopmentAuthority under the MARD, said Hai Duong has suffered high post-harvesting lossesat 10-20 percent. Meanwhile, 95 percent of the province’s farm produce are soldto the market without being processed.

DeputyMinister of Agriculture and Rural Development Tran Thanh Nam said that theGovernment’s supporting policies for investors to invest in agriculture is agood chance for Hai Duong. He added that with its favourable location in theHanoi-Hai Phong-Quang Ninh economic triangle, Hai Duong has sufficient conditionsto become a farm produce processing centre.

Hesuggested that the province enhance the promotion of its farm produce trademarksin and outside the country, while investing more in agricultural productstoring and packing facilities at production areas to reduce post-harvest losses.

Meanwhile,the province should apply technology in the sector and coordinate with otherlocalities to form large-scale commercial production areas and connectivitywith major cities across the country, he added.

Expertsat the event introduced new technologies in farm produce processing andstorage, along with recommendations on measures to reform the sector andattract more investment in agriculture.

Atthe conference, a number of agricultural product processing and selling firmssigned agreements with local cooperatives and production facilities./.