Farmers havest rice in the Mekong Delta’s An Giang Province, where the grain imported from Japan is becoming popular.
One of the most popular strains of rice cultivated in certain parts of the Mekong Delta, where the grain reigns supreme, is not indigenous to Viet Nam but is imported from Japan.
For his last harvest, Tran Van Tho, 51, a rice farmer in An Giang Province, earned VND90 million (US$5,000) on an area of 39,000sq.m, nearly double his income from a previous harvest of local rice.
Here in the Mekong Delta’s largest province and the country’s biggest granary, Tho’s success story is not rare, and lua Nhat (Japanese rice), as the rice is known, has won over the hearts of the area’s farmers in recent years.
Pham Van Huong, a farmer in Cho Moi District, said the rice was rich in protein, fragrant and glutinous."We sell out all our harvests of lua Nhat, and don’t have any left. We don’t have to worry about the price."
The lua Nhat’s round rice grain requires less care than locally grown long-grained strains because it is disease-proof, while the biggest risk comes from harmful insects.
"We spray biological insecticides only," Huong said. Intensive care is needed in the first 10 days when it grows very slowly, and after that it picks up pace significantly.
Nguyen Van Vo, a farmer in the province’s capital Long Xuyen, said farmers "don’t have to work harder but we earn twice as much as compared to our previous crops."
The price ranges from VND6,200 to 8,100 a kilogramme, while the long-grained counterpart sells for slightly more than VND4,000 a kilogramme.
"The cultivation techniques are no big deal," said Vo. "They are not that different from what we’ve practised for years."
Vo said drying was the most difficult part of the job. "We have to find out a precise degree of dryness, while not breaking too many grains."
Vo said he was one of many farmers who submitted applications at the local Farmers’ Association to grow the rice.
The association is responsible for selecting farmers based on experience and knowledge, who are then recommended to Angimex-Kitoku, the company that runs the Japanese rice project in An Giang Province.
"Then you enter into a contract with the company and are given seeds to grow," he said.
Contract farming
The idea for growing such a strain began in 1992, when An Giang Import-Export Company (Angimex) teamed up with Japan’s leading food company, Kitoku, to form a joint-venture, said Tran Minh Son, head of the company’s department in charge of developing lua Nhat.
"We spent the first three years testing around eight to 10 strains on local soil," recalled Son, adding that it was not until 1995 that the company started to grow lua Nhat on the first 50ha in Long Xuyen City.
That eventually grew to reach more than 900ha last year, before jumping to almost 2,000ha this year.
Cultivation has expanded to the districts of Chau Thanh, Chau Phu, Thoai Son, Phu Tan, and to a trial project in Tri Ton and Cho Moi Districts.
Of the original strains, only four, including Hana, Kinu, Akita and Koshi, are now being used.
The seeds, which are imported every year from Japan, are bred into first and second generation seeds before being given to farmers.
Apart from seeds, the farmers receive toxic-free insecticides and technical instructions, and Angimex-Kitoku’s contracts with wholesale suppliers to ensure that farmers can turn out farming commodities at the lowest prices possible.
"For their part, the farmers will pay all their own expenses, and above all, they are supposed to abide by technicians’ instructions and not sell their harvests to anyone else," Son said of the contract terms.
Difficulties have occurred, however, as farmers "relied too much on experience passed down from generations to be convinced of our instructions," he said.
Up to 40 per cent of the last harvest was not up to standard since the proportion of broken grains exceeded the benchmark 4 per cent.
"They did not understand the characteristics of lua Nhat," he noted.
He said the company had marked up the buying price from VND7,500 to VND8,100 a kilogramme for rice in line with the requirements, and that if farmers strictly followed instructions they could turn out high-quality rice and earn more money.
Sometimes farmers cannot wait for their turn to sell rice at the end of harvest so they work with traders who approach them directly.
"In that way, they can save on expenses that cover carrying the rice to our storehouses," he added, noting that the local government now closely monitors any trading boats at the end of the harvest to ensure there are no illegal sales.
No price worries
The biggest advantage for the farmer is that Agimex-Kitoku is committed to buying prices it pledged at the beginning of the crop planting, despite market ups and downs.
"Farmers are relieved of their constant concern about rice prices, which have dealt a blow to crops in the Delta in recent years," Son said.
At first, the farmers were wary about pledged prices because they had heard similar promises that had not materialised after the market tanked, said Le Tuong Trung, 27, one of 22 agronomists who work directly with farmers on the fields, from seed treatment through to harvest.
Each agronomist is assigned an area, usually a commune, with around 100ha and 50 farmers each.
"We take time to visit them in turns, making sure that we’ve met at least five farmers a day," said Trung, who is in charge of Thoai Son District’s Hoi Giang Commune.
"They plant two or three crops before they become proficient," he added, noting that Japanese strains were immune from many local diseases like rice blast that recently plagued a large area of long-grained rice crops.
"However, inclement weather can harm it," Trung said.
So far, the strains have adapted to local soil and weather, said Chau Van Ly, vice chairman of the province’s Farmers’ Association.
They can be harvested in just three months, half the time it takes in Japan, partly due to Viet Nam’s warmer climate. Three crops are produced each year.
"The province’s People’s Committee is enormously in favour of the project. They have held meetings with the company, farmers’ associations and farmers to promote it," Ly said, adding that the association has organised farmers into groups which help each other and share experiences.
Son said Angimex-Kitoku planned to expand lua Nhat cultivation to 3,000ha next year and to 10,000ha by 2015.
But the company is taking precautions not to expand the cultivation too quickly, as it could exceed its manpower and storage capacity, which would affect the quality of rice.
"Our top priority is quality, and after that comes productivity, because it’s quality that enhances exports," he said, adding that apart from Japan, the rice is also exported to the UK, France, Canada and several Asian countries.
Lua Nhat has been grown on a trial basis in other Delta provinces such as Kien Giang and Dong Thap, and the outcome "has been amazing", Son said.
"Farmers in those provinces are so fond of lua Nhat that they asked us to move the crops there if An Giang farmers were not interested anymore," he said, laughing.
Since Angimex’s planned expansion of 10,000ha within six years is only a drop in the ocean and An Giang has 280,000ha of rice fields that could still be cultivated and the company has no plans to move into new territory. The lucky farmers in An Giang can only be too pleased.
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