“Large-scale field” model has been developed under the orientation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in most southern provinces and cities of Vietnam since the campaign launched on March 26th 2011 in Can Tho City. This was the first step in the second breakthrough in the national agriculture: “transforming quantity into quality.” At present, the “large-scale field” model has been spread through 12 out of 13 Mekong Delta provinces on an area up to 16,000 hectares in the 2012-2013 winter-spring crop and involved some other crops beside rice.
The initial evaluation and analysis has demonstrated that “large-scale field” model development has brought about certain economic efficiency for enterprises and farmers, formed large-scale production, and increased added value in agricultural production. The enterprises provided input materials such as seedlings, fertilizer, and pesticides for farmers at no interest (Binh Dien Fertilizer, Bayer Pesticide, An Giang Pesticide JSC) or signed the contract to purchase outputs at higher price than market price (by VND100-200/kg). However, most models were poorly linked, thus the efficiency was not high.
In the Mekong Delta, the model linking An Giang Pesticide JSC with farmers in An Giang (Chau Thanh, Thoai Son) is rather efficient. In this model, farmers and the company have been working together throughout the production process. The company provides 3 main inputs of rice production, namely seedlings, fertilizer, pesticide; guides and monitors the whole process of cultivation by the company’s FF team (Farmers’ Friend) team, including technical officers (extension) of the company.
This model has really brought about higher economic efficiency for both farmers and enterprises. Preliminarily, the linkage has helped farmers and businesses maximize business scale and increase added value for the whole production chain. The total income of farming households increases. Farmers gain higher economic benefits thanks to higher productivity (resulting from better seedlings provided by the company, and proper technical procedures), cost savings (thanks to observation of 3 reductions), and not having to pay interest for input material, delivery and drying costs etc. The total added value averages from VND 5-7 million/hectare for winter-spring crop and from VND 3-5 million/hectare for summer-autumn crop.
For the enterprise, the biggest benefits include stable supply of quality goods, active business planning, higher return rate of rice (rice returned is consistently high quality), higher price, and large market for input material consumption. Only taking into account the higher selling price (US$25/tonne) and higher rice yield rate (2.5 percent), the current scope of husking plant in Vinh Binh commune (30,000 tonnes rice per year) can bring about added profit of approximately VND22 billion per year.
This model also has clear social impacts: increased product value for the whole society (farmers, enterprises); stronger brand for Vietnamese rice in international markets; increased investment efficiency for agriculture and rural areas; more jobs for rural people; higher value for agricultural production; makes a foundation for large scale concentrated material rice production areas; and brings investment in drying, husking, and processing units right at the production area, as the business’ long term commitment is only realized when farmers participate in the connection, which possibly leads to realization of 3.8 million hectares rice.
However, there are still many difficulties and challenges for model extension. Particularly, farmers are concerned about increasing input material prices, transparency of institutional links, information about market and capital to invest into production (machines, equipment, etc). Meanwhile, businesses’ issues are large investment for infrastructure construction, especially the large scale field model, unstable output (export), legal rationale for larger production and settlement of disputes with farmers.
M.T
Vietnamese
