Dak Nong Province's Agriculture: Maximizing Advantages for Development

2:48:04 PM | 25/5/2007

Dak Nong Province is located in the southern part of Vietnam’s Central Highlands where the climate is good for agriculture and forestry development.
 
Potential and Advantages
    
Dak Nong Province features a diverse terrain with valleys, plateaus and mountains. The valleys along the Krong No and SerePok rivers are suitable for cultivation of food crops, short-day industrial crops, and cattle and fowl husbandry. The highland area, with an average altitude of 800 metres in Dak Nong, Dak Mil and Dak Song districts, features basalt soil suitable for growing perennial trees and developing animal husbandry. The mountainous area around Dak R’Lap District, also mostly basalt soil, is fit for short-day industrial crops like coffee, rubber, cashew and pepper trees.
 
The Dak Nong climate contains highland characteristics of both high humidity and the dry south-western monsoon, suitable for growing tropical perennial trees. Dak Nong Province has a healthy watershed supporting both the Sere Pok and Krong No rivers, the main water sources for local agriculture. In addition, a number of hydropower projects in the province will create a large area of water surface. At present, Dak Nong Province has 178 lakes and water reserves for aquaculture.
 
Dak Nong Province also has a large available land area, nearly 35,000 hectares, potentially for agriculture or forestation. For the time being, Dak Nong Province has an area of 374,000 hectares of forests, including 367,000 hectares of natural forests. The natural forests in Dak Nong Province are rich in fauna and flora, as well as various types of rare wood with high economic and scientific value.
 
Human resources in Dak Nong Province are abundant, with nearly 200,000 people of working age, accounting for almost half the local population. A large majority of the workforce is in the agricultural and forestry fields. They are experienced in tending short-day and long-day industrial crops.
 
In recent years, strong development of the farm and forest product processing sectors has further boosted agricultural expansion in Dak Nong Province. The farm and forest product processing, food and beverage industries make up 78 per cent of total provincial industrial production value. The processing industry involves primarily coffee, farm products, and wood and forest products. The improved infrastructure and transport system facilitates personal travel and the circulation of commodities, also attracting investors.
 
Development orientation
 
With its strengths, Dak Nong Province strives to keep annual food output growth over 12 per cent to reach 300,000 tonnes in 2010, raising the food crop yield by 13 per cent a year and the industrial crop production by over 11 per cent a year. Dak Nong has immense grassland supporting husbandry development. In addition to quantity growth, the province is focusing on improving the quality of livestock and developing lean-oriented cow and swine herds. All economic sectors, farms and households are encouraged to expand livestock husbandry.
 
Dak Nong is trying its best to make forestry an economic mainstay by allocating forest areas to competent entities, managing and using forest resources for long-term social and economic development, and increasing the forest coverage to 60 per cent. The forestry will expand forested area, suitably exploiting forest resources, upgrading the processing industry and diversifying wood products. This sector is expected to generate more jobs and incomes for local people.
 
Dak Nong’s major economic sectors are agriculture, forestry and aquaculture, most of local inhabitants living on these sectors. In the coming time, the province will thoroughly exploit its advantages and potential to become a strong economy in the Central Highlands and Vietnam as a whole.
           
In 2005, the perennial tree area was more than 103,000 hectares, including 70,700 hectares of coffee trees which bore more than 100,000 tonnes, 420 hectares of cacao trees and 27,000 hectares of short-day crops like ground nut, soybean, sugarcane and cotton.

In 2006, the poultry population consisted of 850,000 head. Many livestock farms become exemplary farms in Vietnam with yearly incomes from VND200 million to VND9 billion. Forest area was expanded by 2,000 hectares in 2006, raising coverage to 57 per cent.

Thanh Ly