From Thanh Nien News
Hanoi-based information technology giant FPT has started a trial project with Japanese electronics firm Fujitsu to promote IT applications in farming in Vietnam.The one-year trial began this month and the companies plan to set up two greenhouses using technology, equipment and expertise from Fujitsu to showcase how IT can help produce quality vegetables, such as medium-size tomatoes and low-potassium leaf lettuce, according to announcements made by the companies earlier this month.
The first greenhouse of 400 square meters has been set up in Hanoi with vegetables with high value addition planted.
Vietnam is one of the world's biggest rice exporters and has been an agriculture economy for years with more than nine million hectares of farmland, including the fertile Mekong and Red River deltas.
But most farmers remain poor as traditional agriculture practices have not proved efficient.
News website VnExpress quoted FPT chairman Truong Gia Binh as saying labor productivity in agriculture is very low and IT applications are the only way to improve it.
Mitsutoshi Hirono, director of creative business at Fujitsu, said computer-based farming methods used in tomato fields in Japan has helped increase productivity from 20 tons a hectare to 50, and farmers' income threefold.
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