The State leader launched an agricultural mechanisation programme by directly driving a tractor on the field to encourage localities nationwide to promote theindustrialisation and modernisation of agriculture and rural areas.

In his speech, President Quang highlighted the significance of the festival, saying that the annual event has become a tradition in the locality’s cultural life, which was recognised as part of the nation’s intangible cultural heritage.

The Tich Dien festival dignifies the importance of agriculture and the role of farmers, and contributes to preserving and upholding cultural values of the locality, he stressed.

It is also an activity to introduce Ha Nam’s image and tourism potential to domestic and foreign visitors and overseas Vietnamese, promoting the province’s socio-economic development, he added.

He expressed his pleasure with the fact that Ha Nam and other localities nationwide have recorded more and more concentrated and machine-based goods production models with the application of high technology and cooperation with foreign investors to produce and process high-quality farm produce.

The President took the occasion to call on sectors and localities throughout the country to successful implement the Party and State’s guidelines and policies relating to agriculture, farmers, rural development and the construction of new-style rural areas.

Ha Nam and other localities should boost hi-tech agriculture development and exports of high-quality agricultural products to improve the living standards of farmers and contribute to the nation’s development, he said.

The festival began in 987 during the Le Dynasty when King Le Dai Hanh decided to plough in Doi Son Commune, Duy Tien District to wish for bumper crops. The practice then became an annual tradition held through many dynasties before falling into oblivion under the reign of King Khai Dinh of the Nguyen Dynasty. It was reinstated in 2009.

Vietnam has about 8,000 festivals each year, of which nearly 90% are traditional festivals, 6% are religious ones and 4% are historical ones.