Specialized agricultural production helps Lai Chau farmers escape poverty

These days the family of Nguyen Van Quyet and other San Thang villagers in Lai Chau city plant high quality rice as soon as they harvested their winter-spring cabbage crop.

In recent years, San Thang commune’s farmland is fully used. Whenever a rice crop is harvested, farmers plant vegetables or flowers.

Quyet said fellow-villagers have pooled their experience in growing vegetables and flowers. A household can earn 21,500 USD per ha from flowers a year.

“Our living conditions have improved since we joined the project at the city’s urging. We have enough water to irrigate all year round thanks to being near a ditch. From just 2 ha of vegetables, we earn nearly 1,300 USD per crop,” Quyet added.

Since 2011, Lai Chau city has been following a master-plan that involves matching farm production to local conditions, applying new technology, and avoiding small-scale, scattered farming. The city has introduced policies that support changing crops and livestock to suit a new concentrated production model. At the same time, links between the State, scientists, businesses, and farmers have been strengthened to facilitate production, processing, distribution, and sales.

Bui Huu Cam, head of Lai Chau city’s Economic Section, told VOV: “To set up specialized areas, the city has invested in infrastructure, principally in irrigation ditches and local roads connecting fields. Although the vegetable growing area is only 25 ha, the city administration has invested in a 3-km irrigation ditch to bring water to the farmers’ vegetable gardens.”

Lai Chau city now has 310 ha of land for growing vegetables, flowers, fruit trees, and aquaculture. The development of specialized areas has helped ethnic minority people earn more than 1,700 USD per person per year.

Luong Chien Cong, Chairman of the People's Committee of Lai Chau city, Lai Chau province, said: “We have called on businesses and wealthy families to invest in commodity production. Fundamental changes have been made to the city’s agricultural production. The most important change has been making commodity production more responsive to market demand.”

To ensure that local farmers have a stable income, Lai Chau city has called for greater efficiency, better environment protection, and food safety, use of technology geared to each region’s needs, and stable production of export products.