Attending the field-tilling ceremony Saturday in Doi Son, northern province of Ha Nam, State President Nguyen Minh Triet personally created the first furrows in order to open a new year with bumper crops.
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| State President Nguyen Minh Triet is creating a furrow at the field-tilling ceremony 2010, Doi Son, Ha Nam Province, February 20, 2010 – Photo: Dan Tri |
Vietnam is always proud of its thousand-year wet-rice cultivation. In the current cause of national industrialization and modernization, agriculture still plays an important role in Vietnam because over 60% of the population is engaging in agricultural activities, said President Nguyen Minh Triet.
Amid the global financial and economic crisis in 2009, the life of Vietnamese people was still stabilized thanks to a strong agriculture, stated the President, underlining that agriculture, countryside and peasantry are “very important fronts” in the process of national development.
According to some ancient documents, in 987, Emperor Le Dai Hanh personally ploughed a rice field in Doi Son Commune of the northern province of Ha Nam, beginning an agriculture-encouraging practice which was preserved and conducted by many Vietnamese emperors later.
In the New Spring of Canh Dan 2010, the provincial authority of Ha Nam, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development solemnly held the field-tilling ceremony.
A village elder of Doi Son, playing as Emperor Le Dai Hanh, created the first furrow to start a new crop. Then, State President Nguyen Minh Triet and leaders of some ministries and the province also joined the ceremony.
Also on Saturday morning, in Ha Nam, President Triet launched the 50th tree-planting festival under the theme “Planting trees to mitigate impacts of climate change.”
The State President called on the entire Party, army and people to sharpen their awareness of environment and forest protection in response to climate change. He encouraged each and every person to plant trees and expand forest areas to keep the country green, clean and beautiful.
As reported by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in 2009, Vietnam planted about 246,000 hectares of new forests and about 170 million individual trees, raising the country’s forest coverage to 39.4%.
