In recent times, the National Agricultural Extension Center (NAEC)- in the role of project implementation agency and Central Project Management Unit (CPMU), together with JICA experts team and Provincial Project Management Unit (PPMU) of 7 target provinces and city, including Hanoi, Hung Yen, Ha Nam, Nam Dinh, Bac Ninh, Hai Duong, Son La has been implementing the activities of the Project for Strengthening Safe Crop Value Chains in Northern Vietnam sponsored by the Japanese Government according to the agreed schedule.
On March 5, 2024, the Second Meeting of Joint Coordinating Committee was organized in Hanoi to summarize the initial achievements achieved as well as plan for extension activities in the coming period.
The project term is 4 years, starting in April 2022 and expected to be completed in April 2026. Even though the project has achieved many remarkable outputs up to now, such as:
- the agricultural extension officers and farmers in the project area have been trained on safe crop cultivation as well as marketing skills,
- events at the central/provincial level were organized to share knowledge, promote digital transformation and application of 4.0 technology, and address information gaps.
- exposure visits and study tours were organized in Japan and Vietnam for both Government officers and technical staffs of CPMU and PPMU.
In addition to those activities, it is expected to reach following target goals in coming time:
- increase by 10% gross profit per unit area of safe crops,
- more than 50% of agricultural cooperatives expanded their sale channels,
- increase by 10% of cooperatives applying BasicGAP/ VietGAP,
- increase by 30% number of cooperatives conducting joint sale of their products based on crop calendar.
Regarding the project's activity plan, the parties agreed on the principle of harmonizing with regular extension services according to the sustainable development scenario, specifically: in 2023 was “Trial stage”. Thus, PPMU members learnt safe crop production and marketing approach introduced by JICA; in 2024 is called “Internalization stage”, which means PPMU members applies JICA’s approach as a part of regular extension service; in 2025 is planned to apply “Institutionalization stage”, and toward the end of the project ”Normalization stage” will be applied to ensure the sustainability of the project. The approaches of Project will be expanded by NAEC nationwide.