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No rice for export by 2020: Report
Vietnam will not have enough rice to spare for export in 2020 if rice productivity continues to stay low for the next decade, a local newspaper said in a report Thursday, citing a government’s forecast.
Nguyen Tri Ngoc, head of the cultivation department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, told Tien Phong the forecast is based on the fact that Vietnamese agriculture remains technologically backward.
The Mekong Delta, the nation’s granary, is expected to produce 20.7 million tons of rice this year, up from 19 million tons in 2007.
However, as rice productivity has already peaked at 5.2 tons per hectare, and rice cultivation area is shrinking, the annual output figure would not exceed 21 million tons in 2020, the Cultivation Department estimates.
Meanwhile, the nation’s population will increase by 13 million by that time from the estimated 86 million now, which means there would be just enough rice to meet the higher demand for the staple.
Dang Kim Son, head of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development in Hanoi, said it is crucial that agricultural production be modernized soon and the government program to subsidize purchase of machinery is a good policy to start with.
The government launched a subsidy program for farmers on May 1 under which farmers can get interest-free loans to buy domestically-produced agricultural tools and machinery.
According to the Vietnam Food Association, the Mekong Delta produces about 60 percent of the national rice crop and accounts for 99 percent of its rice exports.
Vietnam, the world’s second-largest rice exporter, earned about US$3 billion from exporting 4.7 million tons of rice last year.
ThanhNien
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