Sci-tech application to be promoted to ensure food security

Prioritising resources for the research, application, and transfer of science and technology to diversify food products to ensure nutritional balance and food safety in people’s diet is one of the long-term targets set in the Government’s resolution on ensuring national food security until 2030.

Farmers harvest rice in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho. (Photo: NDO/Thanh Tam)
Farmers harvest rice in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho. (Photo: NDO/Thanh Tam)

The resolution, issued on March 25, stated that ensuring national food security is a long-term task and a special concern in the Party and State’s development policies.

In more than ten years, from 2009 to 2019, of implementing the 10th-tenure Politburo’s Conclusion No. 53-KL/TW on the national food security plan until 2020, Vietnam has obtained significant achievements, notably firmly guaranteeing national food security in all circumstances, which have greatly contributed to economic, political, and social stability and national development, especially amid global economic crises and the COVID-19 pandemic, and helped supply food for the world.

According to the new resolution, national food security is an important issue of the country in both short and long terms. The maintenance of rice farming land is necessary for keeping national food security but rice farmers’ livelihoods and income must also be secured. Besides, food security must be associated with water resources security, environmental protection, climate change adaptation, and sustainable development.

Resources must be prioritised for the research, application, and transfer of science and technology to diversify food products to ensure nutritional balance and food safety in people’s diet, the resolution noted.

It also emphasised the importance of ensuring food supply, people’s food accessibility, nutritional demand to be met, and food safety.

Certain tasks and solutions were also pointed out in the resolution, including restructuring and aligning food production with the market; developing infrastructure for food production; stepping up the research, application, and transfer of science & technology in food production, preservation, and processing; improving human resources; and reforming mechanisms and policies on ensuring national food security.