Farmers in the northern province of Hai Duong are busy on theirlitchi farms as they prepare to export the first batch of this localspecialty to the US.

Nguyen Thi Lua’s family inThanh Thuy commune, Thanh Ha district, is one of the 97 householdsfulfilling the US order. Her 19-tree farm had an output of 1.5tonnes in 2014.

Lua said she signed a commitment notto using pesticides containing banned substances to ensure the qualityand safety of the litchi.

Thanh Thuy commune has 25hectares of litchi under Vietnamese good agricultural practice (VietGAP)standards, including 10 hectares for export to the US .

According to Trinh Xuan Khoa, Vice Chairman of the People’s Committeeof Thanh Thuy commune, farmers have received technical and financialsupport as well as safe pesticides from the province to apply VietGAP.

Earlier this month, the US inspected and grantedcodes to two litchi cultivation areas totalling 20 hectares in HaiDuong, he noted.

So far, the province has 10,500hectares of the special “thieu” litchi. Each year, the province appliesVietGAP standard to over 1,000 hectares.

After theUS decided to open its market to Hai Duong’s litchi, the provincerolled out a number of measures to provide a litchi shipment to the USin the middle of this year’s crop.

Vu Thi Ha,Deputy Head of the Hai Duong Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentDepartment, said the province will continue instructing farmers andensuring no banned pesticides are used on the litchi trees.

Six agricultural engineers have been sent to the local litchi areas towork with farmers and advise them in the production process, she said.

Growing litchi is the primary livelihood of farmersin the province. A number of efforts have been made so far to seekmarkets for the product.-VNA