Lessons learned from the spring rice crop

(Baonghean) -Considered to be the highest rice yield crop ever, it can now be concluded that the 2014 spring crop was a successful one. This is the time for the agricultural sector and localities to draw lessons from production experience.

Spring rice harvest in Hung Nguyen.

This spring crop, Nghi Loc's rice production area increased by 200 hectares, all in previously ineffective rice production areas, in semi-mountainous communes with difficult water sources, bringing the district's spring rice area to 7,500 hectares. Not only increasing in area, this year's spring rice crop of Nghi Loc also achieved remarkable results. According to Mr. Nguyen Duc Tho (Head of the District's Agriculture Department), the shift contributing to increasing the efficiency of spring rice production is that the rice varieties are structured in a more progressive direction than previous years. In addition to ensuring the cultivation of at least 2,000 hectares of hybrid rice to ensure food targets, the area of ​​high-quality pure rice has increased from 850 hectares (spring crop 2013) to 1,500 hectares, with quite superior varieties such as DT68, VTNA2, RVT, AC5...

Many large-scale field models have been built. In addition to the strict implementation of the sowing and planting season to help the rice bloom in the right time frame from Coc Vu to Lap Ha (April 20 - May 5), the area of ​​direct-sown rice in the whole district has also decreased by 1,500 hectares, the rice plants are less affected by the cold and rainy weather at the beginning of the season. Plant protection and pest control work has been carried out seriously and effectively, which is also one of the factors contributing to the average spring rice yield in the whole district reaching over 65 quintals/ha, an increase of nearly 4 quintals/ha compared to last year's spring crop.

The first gain in the spring crop production this year in our province is that the area has increased from 88,653 ha to 90,024 ha, mainly in some localities such as Nghi Loc, Yen Thanh... After land conversion, localities have consolidated the dyke system, the irrigation system is more secure. In the beginning of the spring crop, although it was cold and rainy, the level was not as severe as in previous years, thanks to which the seedlings did not freeze to death, other conditions for production were also more secure, contributing to increasing the rice area. Along with that, the rice yield of this year's spring crop is also considered the highest ever - up to over 66 quintals/ha, an increase of 4.8 quintals/ha compared to last year's spring crop and nearly 1 quintal/ha higher than the spring crop with the "record" yield, the spring crop of 2011.

According to Mr. Nguyen Van Lap (Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development), the first reason for our successful production is that at the beginning of the season, the weather was cold and gloomy but there was no frost that damaged the seedlings, the newly planted rice died, the cold and gloomy weather lasted for more than 50 consecutive days in March and April, affecting the growth and development of the rice plants, all rice varieties had a longer growing period of 5 - 10 days. However, thanks to the earlier arrangement of the agricultural calendar, localities gave strong instructions to ensure the season, so the rice plants still bloomed in the most favorable weather period, from April 25 to May 5. Along with that is a reasonable variety structure, ensuring between hybrid rice varieties and pure rice varieties, between high-yield varieties and varieties with good rice quality, such as VTNA2, AC5, RVT... Besides, although the pest situation is very complicated, leaf blast appears widely, but thanks to focused direction, drastic and decisive handling, the infected area and the level of damage caused by neck blast disease are insignificant. Those factors, along with the drastic direction of the province, localities, levels and sectors have contributed to a successful spring rice crop.

The most prominent feature of this year’s spring crop production is that the hybrid rice area has decreased by over 2,000 hectares, while the high-quality pure rice area has increased by nearly 3,000 hectares. As a result, in commodity production areas, in addition to productivity and output, there are also higher selling prices, resulting in significantly higher economic efficiency. People’s awareness has also gradually shifted from focusing on quantity to quality.

According to the general assessment, although the total output and volume of this spring crop is large, the production and production of rice agricultural products are still fragmented and small-scale compared to many other localities. It is still difficult to concentrate them into large quantities of goods. The consumption system is still inadequate, and the amount of agricultural products that are guaranteed is not much. Although in the past, our province has had many mechanisms to encourage enterprises to invest in the agricultural production sector, up to now, only a few enterprises have participated in this sector, such as Nghe An Agricultural Materials Joint Stock Corporation and Vinh Hoa Company Limited participating in investing in building large-scale model fields and guaranteeing the consumption of products.

The reason for this situation is primarily due to the fragmented rice production in Nghe An. In order to buy a large amount of agricultural products, businesses may have to sign contracts with hundreds of households. Meanwhile, investing in agricultural production with farmers is still risky, and farmers are not really aware of complying with signed contracts. To solve this problem, according to Mr. Ho Ngoc Sy, there needs to be a suitable and effective solution for businesses to sign contracts with farmers along the commodity production chain - from production to processing and consumption, helping farmers not to be passive and dependent on private traders as they are now. Policies are available, but in order to do a good job of connecting farmers with businesses, it is necessary to synchronously implement mechanisms and policies of the Central Government as well as the province to attract businesses.

In order to have successful production, valuable lessons learned from this year's spring crop production are that the agricultural sector must base on the actual situation and specific weather and climate conditions to arrange a precise and appropriate crop calendar. The variety structure must be specific, close and appropriate to each region and locality to fully exploit the potential of each region and each variety. In directing, it must be synchronous, drastic, and at the same time, extremely flexible to specific developments, thereby having appropriate solutions for each time and each locality.

Phu Huong