Vietnam is set to gain $1.4 million from the UN over the next two years for its clean vegetable product programme.

The move is part of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s intergrated pest management programme, funded by the Danish government.

An agreement was signed in Ha Noi on April 5 between Anton Rychener, a representative of the FAO, and the Danish ambassador to Vietnam ,Per G. Stavnum.

The programme, which has been carried out in the Mekong river sub-region countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Yunnan province of China, aims to reduce the use of pesticides in vegetable production and raise farmers' incomes.

Since the programme's initiation in 1996, over 40,000 Vietnamese farmers have been provided with IPM vegetable production techniques.

As a result, 58 out of the country's 64 cities and provinces have built clean vegetable production centres for 19,000 hectare of cultivated land. These ecological-based vegetable production centres are mainly located in Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City.

According to Nguyen Thi Hoa, director of Ha Noi's Plant Protection Department, vegetables are the main crops and have brought large incomes to farmers in the city's outlying districts.

She added that the application of IPM vegetable production methods has helped farmers change their traditional cultivation habits and the use of pesticides.

They have given up their habit of spray pesticides regularly, now only spraying as a result of surveys of insects in their vegetable fields.