Agricultural exports to reach $12b in first half

Agricultural and seafood exports will total US$2.1 billion in June, according to the director of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Developmnt’s Planning Department, Trang Hieu Dung.

"The high export turnover in June has helped raise the export turnover for the country in the first six months of 2011 to nearly $12 billion – an increase of 38.7 per cent against the same period last year," Dung told a meeting in the capital city yesterday.

Earnings from primary agricultural products in the first half were about $7 billion, an increase of 52.9 per cent over the same period last year, while seafood exports totalled $2.6 billion – an increase of 28 per cent – and forestry products an additional $1.9 billion – an increase of 16.8 per cent.

Nguyen Tri Ngoc, director of the Department of Crop Production, said that farmers in the north were expecting to have a bumper winter-spring rice crop – 19.74 million tonnes in yield, an increase of 260,000 tonnes over the previous winter-spring crop.

The southern yield was estimated at 12.54 million tonnes, an increase of 110,000 tonnes over the previous crop.

Faced with harsher weather, farmers want to put 7.37 million hectares under rice cultivation for the next crop, with an expected output of about 41 million tonnes – an increase of 1 million tonnes over 2010.

Hoang Kim Giao, head of the Department of Livestock Production, said the long cold spell in early 2011 resulted in the loss of nearly 100,000 heads of cattle. Diseases such as foot-and-mouth, blue-ear and avian flu also wreaked havoc on farmers.

"Since September 2010, foot-and-mouth disease has killed 160,000 cattle nationwide," said Giao.

Addressing the meeting, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat urged all localities to focus on improving the quality of agricultural products and the efficiency of production rather than in higher yields. He also called for greater uses of high technology in agricultural production.

He said he hoped that the nation’s agricultural productivity would increase by 20 per cent over the next decade, and reiterated the Government’s commitment to continue to support farmers in finding markets for agricultural products, including rice and coffee.

"Government has decided to buy 1 million tonnes of rice to help keep the market price at the level of VND5,000/kg," Phat said.

The buying up of rice was designed to sustain the rice market during bumper or poor crops, he added

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