Vietnam should further promote the application of remote sensing
technology in agricultural production, so as to hasten the restructuring
of the sector, a Vietnamese official has said.
Deputy Minister
of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh made the suggestion
during a workshop held in Hanoi on July 30, which focused on
benefits reaped through using the technology in rice farming and plans
to expand it to other fields in the future.
The sector will firstly apply the technology in forest protection, agricultural land planning and use, he said.
According
to the Deputy Minister, the Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation has conducted a project on “Remote sensing-based Information
and Insurance for Crops in Emerging economies (“RIICE”) in Asia,
including Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, the
Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, aiming to reduce the
vulnerability of rice smallholder farmers in the countries.
The involved countries make use of the remote sensing technology to map and observe rice growth.
In
the same way, the risks involved in agricultural lending by banks to
rice smallholders can be reduced through insurance that protects the
farmers’ loans against defaulting due to yield losses and thus trigger
more investments in agricultural production.
In Vietnam, RIICE
has been carried out in the northern province of Nam Dinh and the
Mekong Delta province of Soc Trang, allowing users to collect
information on weather, rice growing process and output, which serve as a
useful foundation for agricultural managers to give appropriate
production directions.
Apart from the rice production
management, the technology has also been used in other fields such as
agricultural and forest land management, forest fire warning, landslide
and alluvium supervision and disaster management.-VNA