(VOV) – The northern province of Ha Nam has identified restructuring agricultural land as key to its new rural development plan to eradicate small-scale production and increase local people’s incomes. VOV’s Le Thom and Tran Hang reports….

(A ripened rice field in Kim Bang District, Ha Nam province )

In the past, Tran Van Thanh from Vu Ban commune in Binh Luc district had almost 1 hectare of farming land, divided into five smaller lots located in different places. Thanh said that sometimes they grew four varieties of rice in one crop which took so long as it was a complex process, out of the whole family, only he and his wife could do the farming. Each harvest used to take them almost two weeks to gather. But Thanh said the restructuring of agricultural land into two paddy-fields has helped him to reduce the workload due to mechanization adding ‘It costs us more than 14 USD to hire people to harvest 360 square meters of rice but we only have to pay half that amount to rent a harvester. Then all we have to do is to transport the unhusked rice home. The only difficulty was the roads are not very accessible to harvesters. Once more roads are built, using machinary will be much cheaper than hiring workers.’

Vu Ban commune in Binh Luc district is one of two villages that were selected to pilot agricultural restructuring. La Quoc Toan, the district’s Party Committee secretary, says that this method has helped local farmers to cut input costs by 30% while increasing the profits. Following the success in Vu Ban, the model will be applied in every other commune in the district. Toan said that although mechanization is much more efficient, it is important to generate jobs for workers who have been made redundant. He noted ‘On top of restructuring agricultural land, we have called on investors to build factories to create jobs for workers after harvest time. Last year, the three factories operating in the commune employed more than 1,000 workers.’

Ha Nam which is in its economic restructuring process with agriculture prioritized as the majority of the people work on the land, which is important for new rural development. Restructuring agricultural land is a key part of the plan, according to Nguyen Manh Hung, Deputy Director of the provincial Agriculture and Rural Development. Hung says ‘The two communes we chose for the pilot program completed their land restructuring successfully, therefore it has been expanded across the province. By the end of this year, 28 key communes in the province will have nearly completed their plans, which will be carried out early next year. The remaining villages will wait and restructure at the end of next year.’

The initial result – a reduction of 30% in input costs as a good example – proves that Ha Nam’s agricultural land restructuring has been on the right track and has been enthusiastically supported by the local people.

Le Thom-Tran Hang – VOV