Illustrative image. (Source: VNA)Can Tho (VNA) – Thissummer-autumn crop, the Mekong Delta – Vietnam’s biggest rice granary – expects to harvest 150,000 tonnes of paddy more than lastyear, according to an official from the Ministry of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment (MARD).
The Mekong Delta has so farharvested about two-thirds of its 1.57 millionhectares of rice with an average yield of 5.7 tonnes per hectare, up 100 kgcompared to last year’s same crop, said Le ThanhTung, deputy head of the MARD’s Department of Crop Production.
The growth is more thanenough to offset the falling output of the last summer-autumn harvest,estimated at around 50,000 tonnes, he added.
The harvest of this season’sentire rice area is expected to be completed in early September and to date,there has been no report on effects of drought or saline intrusion.
Tung noted that the harvest work ofthe summer-autumn crop is being favoured bylow water and rainfall levels which pose no threat of flooding.
As the country struggles tosecure ordersfor the grain in the second half of the year due to a drop indemand from major importers, rice is being sold 200 VND per kg higherthan the last winter-spring crop but 1,000 – 1,200 VND per kg lower than the price of the same period last year.
This price gives farmers a profit margin of 30 percent which is stillmuch lower than that of 2018.
To keep this year’s outputstable or higher than last year, the Ministry of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment have recommended the Mekong Delta citiesand provinces to expand the next autumn-winter crop by 4,000 hectares to about 750,000 hectares.
According to the GeneralDepartment of Customs, Vietnam’s rice exports reached 2.76 million tonnes in the first fivemonths of this year, down 6.3 percent from a year earlier. The country earned1.18 billion USD worth of exports in the period, a decline of 20.4 percent overthe same period last year.
Vietnameserice products, the country’s key export item, are shipped to 150 countriesand territories, including the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, mainlandChina, Cuba, Hong Kong, Singapore, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Mozambique. –VNA
VNA
