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Rains cause farmers billions in losses
Continuous rains have brought heavy losses to the Mekong Delta, which is now harvesting the summer-autumn crop.
The Mekong Delta is now at the peak of the harvest. However, continuous rains have made farmers unable to dry rice, thus slowing down the harvesting pace and affecting rice quality. People are using every available inch in their house as rice-drying ground. People coming to the Mekong Delta these days see rice fields covered with canvas.
Rice put into the…rain
According to Dr. Pham Van Du, Senior Official of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Mekong Delta plans to harvest 800,000 tonnes of summer-autumn crop rice in July, but only 350,000 tonnes have been harvested so far.
Many provinces planned to gather strength to harvest crops in late July. However, the bad weather has made farmers suffer as rice dryers can only meet 25 percent of the demand. Ca Mau province has reported 20,000 hectares of rice inundated. Other provinces, including Soc Trang, Dong Thap and Long An, all have said that rice plants have been crushed by the continuous rains, but there are not official statistics about that.
In the morning on July 22, as the sun began to appear, farmers rushed to roll back their nylon canvases to dry rice. A lot of rice piles had turned dark yellow because they had been there for many days. However, it rained just several hours later, and farmers, once again, had to cover the rice against the rain, which then lasted until late afternoon.
Nguyen Van Tiep in Phu Thuan commune said that it has been raining continuously for the last ten days. “Wet rice is unsalable. We do not know what to do with the rice,” Tiep said.
In many fields, the harvesting has finished, but rice is still there due to the constant rain. Bui Van Thanh, a farmer in Tan Hiep district, related that he has just collected half of the harvested rice only, while the remaining has been ‘left to chance’.
Tao Dai Quoc Nghia in Soc Trang province related that he harvested rice last week, but he still has not been able to dry it. While waiting for the sun, he has to put the harvested rice on the floor in his house and try to dry it with electric pans.
The heavy rains have also made Tran Van Nil in Bac Lieu province suffer heavily and he has had to use the rice to feed his ducks.
Dong Thap has reported that nearly 70,000 hectares have not been harvested.
Rice prices sliding
Nguyen Thi Mai, a petty merchant in Tien Giang province, who specialises in collecting rice for processing for resale to exporters, related that previously, she made one trip every two or three days to collect rice from farmers However, she only makes one trip every week now because she cannot find dry rice to purchase.
Sometimes, Mai has to purchase wet rice from farmers at their fields and he has to dry the rice immediately, or the rice will be spoiled within 24 hours.
According to Mai, the rice price has decreased by 300-500 dong per kilogramme over last week. In some districts in Dong Thap and Long An provinces, IR50404 is now selling at 2,700-2,900 dong per kilogramme, while long grain rice 3,000 or 3,300 dong per kilogramme. However, in many fields in Bac Lieu and Soc Trang, the prices are now just hovering around 2,200-2,400 dong per kilogramme.
Explaining the rice price decreases, petty merchants said that they have to pay a lot to process wet rice. It takes 6-15 hours to dry the wet rice with a dryer, which costs 120-160,000 dong per tonne, not including handling and transport costs.
Tran Hoa Dong, a petty merchant in Soc Trang province, said that he purchases wet rice at 2,300 dong per kilogramme and then resells at 4,100 dong per kilogramme after drying, at which prices he suffers a loss. Many petty merchants have stopped collecting rice from farmers because they do not want to bear losses.
vietnamnet, tt
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