After more than five years of Resolution 120/NQ-CP coming to life, local authorities and people in the Mekong Delta have been gradually building up natural farming models, creating livelihoods for sustainable development.
The Southern Institute of Water Resources Research said that saltwater could penetrate 45-60 kilometers further in the middle area of the Mekong Delta.
Many localities in the Southern region are forecast to suffer from natural hazards including big waves, tidal waves, saltwater intrusion and a scorching temperature of 35 degrees Celsius.
The Mekong Delta has faced saline intrusion since December last year, while the Central Highlands are entering its dry season. This calls for proper solutions from the local authorities to help citizens cope with the harsh situation.
The Center for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation under the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Ca Mau Province held the inauguration ceremony of the project to expand clean water supply pipelines to overcome drought and saltwater intrusion in Ca Mau Province in 2022 on September 27.
The southern region should prioritize rice varieties with high quality and yields for export in the upcoming winter-spring rice, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh has said.
In the first four days of this month, the Mekong Delta has suffered from tropical torrential rain spells, notably serious flooding-triggered rains occurred on the roads of Can Tho City.
Tien Giang Province's Management Board of Investment Project on Constructing Agricultural and Rural Development Works, on the morning of February 7th, held a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of a steel dam to prevent saltwater and store freshwater on Nguyen Tan Thanh Canal in Chau Thanh District.
Recently, the situation that farmers raise white-leg shrimp in freshwater areas, specializing in wet rice cultivation in the districts in the Plain of Reeds in Long An Province tends to increase.
At the conference on implementing solutions to develop livestock and fisheries in the new situation held on the morning of April 26, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) said that aquaculture farmers are facing many difficulties and only maintain a farming area of 1.3 million hectares with a production of about 4.75 million tons this year.
According to the National Center for Hydrometeorology Forecasting, the water level in the upstream Mekong River has slowly changed on the first days of April; however, saltwater intrusion on Vam Co and Mekong rivers is expected to highly rise following the high tide from Mid-April.
Aquaculture is more and more developing and plays an important role in the world. The global aquaculture production is currently above 82 million tons. Of which, Vietnam has more than 4.2 million tons, standing in fourth place in the world, and the Mekong Delta accounts for about 70 percent of the total farming area and production of the country.
The Directorate of Water Resources warned that with the forecasted level of saltwater intrusion in March and April this year, it is essential to prevent the possibility of water shortage of about 40,000 hectares of fruit trees in the Mekong Delta.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) stated that although the rice-growing areas reduced, increasing rice yields, stable export of rice, and high selling prices have been beneficial for farmers at a conference to preliminarily summarize the production of the winter-spring rice crop 2020-2021, and deploy production of the summer-autumn, autumn-winter, and the winter rice crops in the South, held on the morning of March 24 in Can Tho.
Nearly 400 workers, engineers and project management staff of the Cai Lon-Cai Be irrigation system are in a hurry to complete the work’s first phase in the southern Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang.
The People's Committee of Kien Giang Province, on March 11, informed that from the beginning of this month, saltwater intrusion in the area has increased highly, with more than 1,234 hectares of rice being affected. Of which, there were 769 hectares of rice with damage of above 70 percent, concentrating in An Bien, Vinh Thuan, and U Minh Thuong districts.
Farmers in the Mekong Delta this season enjoyed bumper harvest of rice and good price when they have harvested more than 350,000 hectares of winter-spring paddy.
In recent days, the export prices of Vietnamese rice have continued to top rice exporting countries, surpassing those of Thailand, India, and Pakistan. Typically, on January 22, the export price was at US$523 per ton for five-percent broken rice, $498 per ton for 25-percent broken rice, and $438 per ton for 100-percent broken rice. Last year, the export prices of Vietnamese rice also took the highest position many times.
In recent days, farmers in the Mekong Delta have been flexibly sowing the winter-spring rice crop early to avoid drought and saltwater intrusion at the end of the rice crop. Not only using high-quality rice varieties, but the percentage of farmers using certified rice varieties has also increased rapidly. These are important turning points in improving the quality of rice to enhance the value of Vietnamese rice in the international market.
