Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Nguyen Duc Dan, Chairmanof the Ba Trai Commune People’s Committee, cannot hide his happiness as hediscusses his community’s strides in tea production.

Dan said tea production has been rising, boosting theincomes of local farmers making the commune the most important tea plantingarea in Hanoi’s Ba Vi district with a total cultivated area of 560ha.

In 2014, the commune received technical help from the HanoiDepartment of Agriculture and Rural Development to plant tea that meetsVietnamese Good Agriculture Practice (VietGAP) standards, which ensure a highlevel of standardised quality through the use of modern farming techniques.Local farmers were taught methods to update their ineffective old farmingtechniques.

For example, farmers like Dan who elected to applyVietGap standards were trained to a use new, more efficient watering system andto harvest using machines instead of manually. Since then, tea production hasgradually risen.

On average, each hectare of tea in the commune bringsin about 220 million VND (9,400 USD) of profits per year, as much as twice theprofit generated by conventional farming techniques.

Director of the municipal Department of Agricultureand Rural Development Chu Phu My said Hanoi has targeted increasing the amountof agricultural production that uses hi-tech practices from 25 percent of allagricultural areas last year to 35 percent by the end of this year.

Hanoi has applied biotechnology, new cultivation andpreservation methods and automation to its agricultural production, accordingto the municipal Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

My said it would also urge localities to completeprogrammes to set up new-style rural areas.

In addition to its hi-tech push, the municipalagricultural sector has also allowed farmers to import livestock from othercountries to raise productivity.

Farmers have imported chickens from the CzechRepublic, pigs from Thailand and Canada and cows from Belgium. The animals arecross-bred with domestic livestock to create more productive offspring. Forinstance, the cattle bred from domestic cows and imported Belgian cows growlarger than most Vietnamese cows, producing more beef.

Director of the Hanoi Centre for AgriculturalDevelopment Hoang Thi Hoa said the application of hi-tech farming practices notonly served Hanoi’s demand for food, but also helped turn the capital city intothe country’s biggest supplier of quality breeding stock.

Each year, Hanoi supplies more than 50 milliondomestic fowls, 200,000 pigs and 30,000 cows to different provinces and cities.

Despite this progress, the capital city still facesseveral obstacles to applying hi-tech agricultural practices.

The use of modern technologies remains low. Just924.5ha of fruit trees are cultivated using hi-tech farming practices, makingup 6.2 percent of the total fruit area of the city. Just 306.5ha of teacultivation areas have taken the step, making up 10.2 percent of the total areain the city.

Change remained slow because farmers lack investmentand have been unable to co-ordinate closely with businesses.

Agricultural experts said more investments are neededin agricultural production and processing.

My said that to ease difficulties, the departmentproposed the municipal authorities issue policies to urge agriculturalproduction, and set up hi-tech agricultural zones.-VNS/VNA