Friday, 14 November 2008

Farmers caught out by sudden change in rice demand

Porters and rice dealers bring high-quality Cambodian fragrant rice through the border at An Giang Province.

ThanhNien
November 14, 2008

Competition from cheap high-quality rice from Cambodia has left Mekong Delta farmers with mounting stockpiles of suddenly unpopular low-quality rice.

The farmers from Vietnam’s southern rice bowl have thousands of tons of IR50404 variety rice from their fall-winter crop, harvested in late September.

Farmers had been expecting rice traders to snap up the high-yielding low-quality IR50404 variety rice, which was grown in about 30 percent of the Mekong Delta’s cultivated land.

But rice traders are no longer interested in IR50404, preferring to buy high-quality rice to meet increased domestic demand for fragrant rice.

IR50404 has a 15-25 percent broken grain rate, the cheapest type of rice. High-quality rice only has a 5 percent broken grain rate.

Rice dealers, who used to buy unhusked rice from farmers and resell the husked rice to traders, are now preferring to buy fragrant rice such as Jasmine or Khawdakmali from Cambodia.

Cambodian farmers are selling Jasmine and Khawdakmali rice for VND5,000-VND5,300 (US$0.30-0.32) a kilogram. Cambodian farmers are keen to sell their harvest so they have money for an upcoming moon festival and rice dealers are eager to buy, as they are offered tax breaks on rice traded with Vietnam’s neighbors.

Vietnamese farmers, meanwhile, have only a small amount of Jasmine rice, which is being sold for VND6,900 ($0.40) a kilogram.

Domestic IR50404 is being offered by farmers for as little as VND2,500 ($0.15) a kilogram but “the dealers just show no interest,” said one farmer from Hau Giang Province.

Some dealers have even told farmers, “If you have IR50404, please don’t call. Thanks.”

Over the past 10 days there has been more than 1,000 tons of unhusked fragrant rice a day imported from Cambodia over the border at An Giang Province’s Tinh Bien District, according to a Vietnamese rice dealer.

Cambodian Kim Pou said his team of 50 porters and three other groups of porters had been busy lugging rice across the border in recent weeks.

The change in demand has led to many Mekong Delta farmers considering turning all their fields over to fragrant rice for their winter-spring crop, planted in December and January, according to Ho Minh Khai, director of Co Do Agriculture Company, which owns thousands of hectares of rice field.

In the past, the farmers had not planted high-quality rice varieties because they were considered difficult to grow. But their large stockpiles are making them rethink.

Khai said his company also planned to further invest in growing fragrant rice in a bid to attract more customers.

However, if all farmers do the same it could be a disaster, said Le Van Banh, director of Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta Rice Research Institute (CLRRI).

Banh said Vietnamese fragrant rice wouldn’t be able to compete with Thai fragrant rice in terms of quality and the domestic consumption of this type of rice remains low. “If every farmer grows fragrant rice, who will we sell it to?”

Up to 80 percent of Vietnam’s rice output is consumed by the domestic market, Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Cao Duc Phat told a National Assembly session on Tuesday.

Cambodia and Thailand are growing only one crop of high-quality low-yielding rice a year. However, Vietnam should not try to copy the rice growing methods of its neighbors because “we have a big population and not much farmland and so we have to rely on high-yielding varieties,” Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper quoted Nguyen Tri Ngoc, director of the ministry’s Cultivation Department, as saying.

The best way to maximize yields and profits would be to reserve parts of the region’s rice fields for high-quality rice, said Ngoc.

He said five years ago the ministry started a program to promote this method but farmers had not changed their crop growing habits as “no local officials told them to.”

In August Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asked food companies and rice traders to buy rice from the Mekong Delta’s farmers for at least VND4,000 (25 cents) a kilogram.

Now that the farmers cannot sell their rice, even at VND2,500 (15 cents), the ministry can do nothing, Ngoc said. “The traders are not sharing the country’s difficulties,” he said.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This makes the mixing phase a lot easier, just put in your concrete and water, and off you go by the wheelbarrow load.
Make sure that you don't end up with a look of patches by checking to see that the glitter falls all the way around the edges of a newly-painted area. It is advantageous for the customer to compare the prices for an additional dumpster rental from the normal waste removal company against an offer made by a collector that will place a dumpster for a one-time pickup.

Anonymous said...

The newspapers help readers to get the hottest updated and happenings around the world.
This is a growing and profitable market with the increase in ability for
all types of business- large or small - to do business in an international platform
and other is National Newspaper Networks combine newspapers
from several States within the USA. Newspaper production is known to be the most lucrative and
respected industry in the modern age. He proudly displays a
disdain for homosexuals, especially those that are HIV-positive, by stating that they should be sequestered away
from the rest of Frances moral society. Thats why Indian Hindi
papers are very popular in all corners of India.


Also visit my web site click here

Anonymous said...

It is said that the celebrations will greatly add to Egypt
flights from other African countries as well as western countries with
dense Christian population. Include the locality Most realtors,
property brokers and owners miss out on this when placing ads in newspapers
for selling or leasing their properties. To publicize
her thoughts in America, El Saadawi examines how each media institution is funded
and whose interests are represented before she agrees to an
interview. I mean there is certainly intelligence behind the construction, so Mother Nature
has to take a back seat in this case. Lap books are another tool a teacher can
use to help students create booklets that they will want to keep and review.



my web site: egyptian newspapers