Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat works in Nghe An

(Baonghean) -This morning, April 22, the working delegation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development led by Minister Cao Duc Phat worked on the national target program on new rural construction and the prevention of livestock and poultry diseases in Nghe An.

Receiving the delegation, on the side of Nghe An province, there were comrades Phan Dinh Trac - Member of the Party Central Committee, Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, Nguyen Dinh Chi - Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee and representatives of provincial departments, branches and sectors.

The Minister visited Yen Thanh district to inspect the construction of new rural areas in Son Thanh commune (a pilot commune for new rural areas in the district), and to inspect the situation of preventing blue ear disease in pigs in Bac Thanh commune.

Minister Cao Duc Phat works at Son Thanh model commune.

After inspecting the situation in Yen Thanh district, the delegation had a working session with the People's Committee of Nghe An province on the situation of agricultural production and rural development in 2011. Up to this point, the planting of spring crops in Nghe An has been completed. The current worrying thing is the epidemic situation occurring in livestock and poultry. A typical example is the blue ear disease in pigs, which has occurred in 21 communes of 3 districts (Yen Thanh, Do Luong and Quynh Luu) with a total of 4,450 sick pigs that had to be destroyed.

Regarding the new rural construction situation, up to now, the whole province has completed the investigation of the current rural situation in 435 communes in the whole province. The investigation results show that 10 criteria are quite good, 4 criteria are average, and 5 criteria are low. Currently, the work of implementing planning, making plans, and mobilizing resources for new rural construction has been and is being urgently deployed by the Steering Committees at all levels, striving to have 20% of communes meeting new rural standards by 2015.

The inspection team inspected the situation of blue ear pig disease in Bac Thanh commune.

Concluding the meeting, Minister Cao Duc Phat acknowledged and highly appreciated the efforts of Nghe An province in the fields of agriculture and rural development, especially in the field of new rural construction. He praised Nghe An for its many creative ways of mobilizing people to build rural infrastructure, especially the work of mobilizing people to voluntarily donate land to build inter-village and inter-commune roads. This is an approach that needs to be replicated in other localities. However, Nghe An needs to integrate with national target programs, focusing on two difficult criteria: income and labor structure; selecting appropriate models to build development directions for each locality; building new rural areas starting from villages, hamlets, and communes...

Regarding disease prevention, Minister Cao Duc Phat said that the containment and suppression of the epidemic is the current key task, especially since there is currently no specific medicine for the blue ear disease, so it is necessary to immediately destroy the infected pigs as soon as they are detected to avoid the spread of the disease on a large scale. The Minister suggested that the People's Committee of Nghe An province should apply the Government's policies to promptly support farmers in the epidemic-affected areas, minimizing the damage that causes difficulties in the economic life of farmers.

Khanh Ly