A drone is used to spray pesticides on rice fields in Soc Trang. (Photo: VNA)

Soc Trang - As many as 29,000 farmer households in the Mekong Delta province of Song Trang benefited from the Vietnam Sustainable Agriculture Transformation (VnSAT) project funded by the World Bank, heard a conference to review the project in the locality on December 28.

The sub-project in Soc Trang (VnSAT Soc Trang) is invested by the provicial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, and implemented by the VnSAT Soc Trang management board.

VnSAT Soc Trang was implemented on a total area of 29,000 ha of rice land in 30 communes, with total investment of over 330 billion VND (over 13.6 million USD).

Commenced since 2016, the project focused on supporting and investing in farmer organisations through cooperatives, providing training courses, organising workshops and seminars, building technical transfer models, enhancing communication activities, providing equipment and supporting infrastructure development for local farmers.

According to Huynh Ngoc Nha, Director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the project aims to contribute to realising the province's agriculture restructuring project, thus increasing income for local rice farmers. It also helps improve the competitiveness of the rice industry, and reduce negative impacts on the environment.

Addressing the conference, Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Truong Quoc Nam praised efforts made by technicians and local farmers for completing the project, saying that the project has contributed to bringing great economic efficiency to the local agricultural sector.

Farmers in the project areas have adopted advanced technical solutions, and farming knowledge to reduce manufacturing costs, and increase quality of rice, profitability and competitiveness.

Soc Trang’s ST25 rice variety was twice honoured as the World’s Best Rice, helping the locality reach strong growth in rice export. Soc Trang earned 400 million USD from exporting rice in 2023.

Nam underlined the need for the locality’s agricultural sector to maintain the results of the project, and implement other programmes and projects to develop and expand high-quality rice areas, thus creating a premise for Soc Trang to join a project of planting 1 million ha of low-emission high-quality rice by 2030 launched by the Government.