Hanoi (VNA) – High-quality flower farꩲming has helped farmers in Hanoi’s suburban districts become more prosperous in recent years, said the municipal Agriculture and Rural Development Department Director Chu Phu My.

My said that since the city’s project on flower and ornamental plants farming was implemented in 2012, high-quality flower zones had been formed, including 170ha of roses in Me Linh district’s Van Khe commune, 20ha of peach in Long Bien district, orchid and lily farms in districts of Dan Phuong, Chuong My, Hoai Duc, Quoc Oai and Phuc Tho. The high-quality flowers helped growers earn profits up to ten times higher than from normal flowers, he said. Nguyen Van Suot, a gardener in Tay Tuu commune, Bac Tu Liem district, said his family earned more than 50 million VND (2,200 USD) yearly from 1,000sq.m of lilies. He hired ten people to work on his farm, paying each about 3 million VND (135 USD) monthly, he said. Vice Chairman of the Tay Tuu communal People’s Committee Bui Trung Hoa said that flowers helped local farmers earn on average 550 million VND (24,700 USD) per hectare, much more than rice cultivation. Nguyen The Do Cuong, a gardener in Huong Ngai commune, Thach That district said that he earned billions of Vietnamese dong each year from forest orchids. With assistance from the Hanoi Agriculture Promotion Centre, Cuong raised hundreds of orchids which were grown around the year, generating a stable income for his family, he said. However, the agriculture official My said that most flower growers sold to wholesalers with unstable prices and volumes. “The city’s agriculture sector wants to boost cooperation with other localities to set up a stable supply-consumption chain for flowers,” he said, adding that better links between farmers and firms are needed. Vice Director of the Hanoi Agriculture Promotion Centre Vu Thi Huong told the Nong thon ngay nay ( Countryside Today) newspaper that flower growing in Hanoi had been a popular industry since the 1980s. The area for flowers and ornamental plants in the city in 2014 was about 2,650ha, more than four times higher than in 2005. In 1995, each hectare of flower/ornamental plants generated 86 million VND (3,900 USD) per year but in 2014, this increased to 360 million VND (16,000 USD) per hectare per year. Huong said that few flower-growing zones in the city applied modern farming and processing technology, which reduced flower quality, adding the city did not have a good supply of high quality seedlings. She noted that most flowers were grown with traditional techniques which were cheap, easy to apply but low quality and vulnerable to cacogenesis.-VNA