Vietnam needs to pay more attention and invest more in poverty reductionand ensuring food security, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment Nguyen Thi Xuan Thu has said.

At ameeting held in the Red River Delta province of Thai Binh on October 11in response to World Food Day 2013, Thu said that having realised theimportance of agriculture and rural areas, the Government has issued anational programme on building new-style rural areas for the 2010-2020period.

The celebration of this year’s World FoodDay, themed “Sustainable food systems for food security and nutrition,”was held in Kien Xuong district’s Thanh Tan commune, a model new-stylerural area with a rate of households living in poverty below 3 percent.It proves that with high determination, Vietnam is capable of reducingpoverty, alleviating hunger and building new-style rural areas, Thusaid.

She also expressed her hope to receive moresupport from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),especially for a programme to build new-style rural areas.

Participants at the meeting heard the Government’s report onsocio-economic development in 2012 which said that Vietnam had 450,300households living in hunger, a year-on-year fall of 27.6 percent.

The food storage happened in the northern midland and mountainousregion, the northern central and central coastal areas and the CentralHighlands. The 2012 poverty rate was about 11.5 percent, down 1.3percent over 2011.

At present, about 870 million people in the world suffer from malnutrition.

To deal with the problem, FAO Country Chief Representative Jong Ha Baesaid there should be intervention activities for agriculturalproduction, natural environment protection, healthcare and education.-VNA