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Vietnam Needs To Make Rice Industry More Efficient, Say Experts

HAU GIANG, Dec 4 (Bernama) -- Experts at a workshop on Vietnamese rice said that Vietnam needs to make the rice industry more efficient with better mechanisation and storage facilities, large-scale production as well as reduction of post-harvest losses, according to the Vietnam news agency. Chung Van Co, a farmer from Chau Thanh District, who participated in the workshop, which was held under the auspices of the first Vietnam Rice Festival, said his biggest concern are the lack of stable and profitable outlets for his harvest and the prevalence of fake agricultural materials in the market. "Good harvests but low prices' is a refrain in the Cuu Long [Mekong] River Delta," said Co. Head of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) Vo Hung Dung said that most farmers in the region have little resources to invest in their farms, and as a result, they have to borrow from banks and sell their harvest at any price, to pay back their loans. Farmers are able to earn just US$400 to 450 on average, less than half the national average income of $1,000 a year, according to Dr Bui Chi Buu of the Southern Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology. Local farmers needed to cultivate at least four to five hectares like their Thai counterparts to improve their incomes. However, Dr Duong Van Chin of the Mekong Delta Rice Institute said the majority of rice farming households in the region had less than 1 hectare each. "Concentration in paddy fields ownership is quite slow," he said, adding that not many local farmers can reach the allowed threshold of 6 hectares. He said farmers should co-operate with each other to accumulate land to achieve cultivation efficiencies. Saline water was invading further inland as a result of climate change, and at times it was just 10 km away from Can Tho City, said Dr Nguyen Van Luat, former head of the Mekong Delta Institute of Rice. "Climate change is dealing a [huge] blow to the Cuu Long [Mekong] Delta right now," he said. Vietnamese scientists have successfully developed new strains of rice that can withstand deep persistent flood or brackish land, Luat told the workshop. "We're tentatively growing them in some hectares, and these strains also require new cultivation techniques like shortened rice sapling preparation," he added. Dr Buu pointed to over-exploitation of land as the main cause of declining yield, because the soil was exhausted. "Cultivation needs to adapt to the soil's natural state by applying global Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) standards," he said, noting that farmers in Delta Tien Giang Province's Cai Lay District are providing good examples. On the other hand, year-round cultivation can spread pests and diseases from one crop to another. "Every year there should be two intermissions between crops in the Delta to reduce the risk of pests," Chin recommended. He said since most of the work on the fields are manually done, it is estimated that farmers are suffering four percent of losses during harvest and preservation. "If combine harvesting machines were brought into play in all the fields, farmers could save 400,000 tonnes of rice, which roughly costs about US$85 million in value," he said. Besides, the absence of large storehouses during rainy seasons had prompted farmers to sell large portions of their harvests to the market simultaneously, causing substantial drops in prices. -- BERNAMA

 

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