On April 26, a conference was held by the Ministry of Industry and Trade to assess the state of rice exports in the first quarter of 2023 and discuss the management direction of rice exports in the near future.
According to Mr. Le Thanh Tung, Deputy Director of the Department of Crop Production, it is necessary and urgent to reduce the amount of rice seeds for direct seeding to about 80kg per ha, which is the key to reducing the cost of rice production. When the amount of rice seed is reduced, the costs of fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation will decrease in tandem, and farmers' profits will increase.
Although the growing area of rice this year decreased compared to last year, paddy prices in the Mekong Delta still plunged sharply, with some rice varieties falling by VND1,300 per kg because enterprises could not export after purchasing paddy.
Currently, farmers in the Mekong Delta provinces have entered the peak harvest season of the summer-autumn rice crop. Statistics show that the whole region sowed more than 1.5 million hectares, down 9,000 hectares. Rice yield is estimated at 56.66 quintals per ha, an increase of 1.15 quintals per ha compared to the previous summer-autumn rice crop; total summer-autumn rice production in the Mekong Delta this year is estimated at more than 8.5 million tons, up 124,000 tons.
Entering April, farmers in Mekong Delta provinces are harvesting the last winter-spring rice fields of the total area of 1.5 million hectares, with an output of about 10.7 million tons. The prices of rice have declined in the past few days but remained at high levels as farmers focused on producing rice varieties to supply the high-end segment. This is considered an important change for Mekong Delta rice farmers.
Aquaculture is more and more developing and plays an important role in the world. The global aquaculture production is currently above 82 million tons. Of which, Vietnam has more than 4.2 million tons, standing in fourth place in the world, and the Mekong Delta accounts for about 70 percent of the total farming area and production of the country.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), on March 25 in Tien Giang Province, held a conference to summarize the year 2020, implement the plan for 2021, and discuss solutions to speed up the progress of the Vietnam Sustainable Agricultural Transformation project (VnSat).
According to rice experts, after winning the World’s Best Rice award, Vietnamese rice has resonated in the global market. If the country rapidly expands the production of ST25 rice with a safe cultivation process, this will be the golden time for Vietnam to advertise the Vietnamese rice brand.
Entering August, the export prices of rice in Thailand and India both increased. However, Vietnam is the country seeing bright colors in rice exports. According to rice experts, with increasing rice export volume and value, Vietnam will pass Thailand to become the world’s largest rice exporter this year. The current matter is to build and solidify the Vietnamese rice brand in the market.
Prolonged hot temperatures have been causing difficulties to farmers in the Central provinces of Nghe An and Thanh Hoa. Thousands of hectares of rice were killed because of this record hot weather.
From the beginning of this year, the developments in the weather were quite complicated, causing disadvantages for agricultural production. Fortunately, thanks to proactive suitable coping measures, farmers in provinces in the Mekong Delta achieved goods results in the winter-spring rice crop and now are harvesting summer-autumn rice crop with the expectation of good harvest and high price.
Amid saltwater intrusion and drought, Mekong Delta provinces still managed to maintain paddy production at 10.7 million tons, merely down around 118,000 tons. This is an impressive effort of farmers and local authorities, hereby, helping to ensure food security.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) on March 27 held an online meeting to summarize preliminarily the winter-spring rice crop, deploy the production plan for the summer-autumn, winter, and autumn-winter rice crops this year in Southern and Mekong Delta provinces.
The Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection of Kien Giang Province on November 13 said that farmers in Tan Hiep, Chau Thanh, Giong Rieng, Go Quao and Hon Dat districts have sowed around 52,600 hectares out of 289,000 hectares of winter-spring rice crop, accounting for 18.2 percent of the plan.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development held a conference to review the production of the autumn-winter rice crop and the seasonal rice crop of 2019 and deploy cultivation plan for the upcoming winter-spring rice crop in provinces in the Southeast region and the Mekong Delta on October 11 in Tien Giang Province.
Report by the Department of Crop Production said that southern provinces grew more than 1.64 million hectares of rice in the summer-autumn rice crop of this year, a decrease of 46,000 hectares compared to the same period last year, with productivity estimated at 5.6 tons per hectare, up 1.39 tons per hectare.
