Initial achievements

Ho Chi Minh City’s rural areas accounted for half of the city’s natural land. Though accounting for only 1% of the city’s GDP, the city’s suburban areas play an important role.

This used to be the former resistance base. These areas are home to over two million farming people. Many of them experienced hardships and suffered great losses during the 30 years of war.

As the demands for urban expansion and urbanisation, the suburban agriculture has shifted to producing commodity agricultural products of high economic value towards a high-tech and ecological agriculture, in line with the strategy to develop a civilised, modern city of sustainable environment.

With this policy in mind, in recent years, the suburban rural area has seen great changes.

The most outstanding achievement was the shifting of the production structure towards commodity industry of high productivity and sustainable development.

Agricultural land in Ho Chi Minh City is not suitable for developing agriculture as over 50% is heavily alkaline soil. During the past decade, agricultural areas have been reducing consecutively, down about 1,000 hectares a year due to the process of urbanisation. In the meantime, farmers plant only low-yield rice varieties in areas under rice cultivation with an average income of VND 6.76 million a hectare a year.

Realising this, the city authorities have set a policy to change part of the areas under rice cultivation to industrial plants and breeding varieties of high economic value.

Thus, a 9,000 hectare safe vegetable area has been formed, bringing about an average income of over VND 100 million a hectare a year.

Most notably is the shifting of low-yield rice area to aqua-culture, mostly shrimp. During the past five years, areas under rice cultivation have reduced 30,000 hectares. The two suburban districts of Nha Be and Can Gio have taken the lead in this shifting trend. In these two districts, total area under aqua-culture has increased from 1,900 hectares in 2000 to the current nearly 6,000 hectares. Thus, aqua-culture output has increased by 796%.

Milk cow raising has also developed strongly over the past few years. Farmers in the city now raise around 59,000 cows, accounting for 60% of the country’s total cows.

In addition, the cultivation of ornamental plants, flowers and raising ornamental fish has also developed. Ho Chi Minh City is not only the a centre for producing ornamental flowers and plants for a long time now with a total area of over 1,000 hectares, but also the country’s biggest market for flower and ornamental plants consumption.

Each year, Ho Chi Minh City earns around billions of Vietnamese dong from flower exports. Raising flowers and ornamental plants for commodity consumption has become an important sector in the process of rural agricultural structure shifting in Ho Chi Minh City.

Ho Chi Minh City has also been considered as the country’s biggest centre for producing and exporting fancy fish with over 500 households embarking on this trade with an average annual export turnover of more than US $5 million. Fancy fish raising has developed strongly in Ho Chi Minh City in recent years.

The city has set a target that by 2010, total revenue from flowers and ornamental plants will account for 10-15% of the city’s agricultural revenue.

Agricultural economic structure shifting has created specialised growing areas such as high-yield rice areas in Binh Chanh, Hoc Mon and Cu Chi districts, high-quality vegetable areas in Hoc Mon and Cu Chi districts, fruits areas along the Saigon river and Dong Nai, cow-raising areas in Cu Chi and Hoc Mon and an aqua-culture area in Can Gio.

Synchronous measures needed

However, the process of agricultural economic structure shifting in Ho Chi Minh City is still slow and not stable. There are still large areas under low-yield plants with up to 60% of farming households in the areas taking part in cultivating these plants.

Industry, especially processing industry, home craft industries, industrial complexes, trade and services have developed slowly and account for only small proportion in the city’s agricultural economy.

The shifting of agricultural labour to other sectors is still slow, especially in urbanised areas. The agricultural labour force has not been trained to add more labour to the city’s industrial and service sectors. The gap in living standards between rural and urban areas has not been narrowed down.

Entering the new period, the city continues its shifting of agricultural economic structure in line with building new countryside, raising the living standards, and building a new lifestyle in conformity with the process of urbanisation.

Efforts will be made towards developing high-tech agriculture and centralised production, thus creating the city’s key agricultural products with mass production to meet the increasing demands of the city.

To realise these targets, the city has worked out a roadmap. Accordingly, priorities will be given to establishment of areas for production of high-quality plant and breeding varieties of the southern region. Areas under organic vegetables will be expanded. Production of ornamental plants, flowers and fish for exports will be increased. Models of agricultural production in combination with eco-tourism services will be built.

In the next five years, the city targets to shift 24,000 hectares under rice cultivation of low effectiveness to production of others plants and livestocks of high economic value.

Farmers are urged to apply advanced techniques so as to produce products of high quality.

Developing the growing of ornamental plants and flowers and raising ornamental fish for exports has been set as a key task in the city’s general development planning. City should work out measures and policies to facilitate farmers in developing this potential sector.

Source: SGGP