Support 'two rice fields' to manufacture agricultural machinery

The policy of building new rural areas requires agricultural production to be mechanized in a modern direction. While domestic researchers’ inventions are still too few, many “rice-farming engineers” have researched and created low-cost machines to serve farming work.

Handcraft... is the main thing

The Northern region is about to enter the winter-spring rice harvest season, and many families are mobilizing their members to go to the fields to harvest rice. Mr. Vu Trong Trung in Minh Tan commune, Thuy Nguyen district, Hai Phong said that his family will harvest rice in the next 10 days. If renting a harvester costs 180,000 VND/sao (360 m2), Mr. Trung's family with 1 mau (10 sao) will have to pay nearly 2 million VND for labor.

Mr. Trung said: “Only families without labor hire harvesters, the rest harvest by hand, although it is hard work but to save costs. Saving money to buy a harvester is not feasible, because imported harvesters cost a lot of money, 700 - 800 million VND/machine, and there are no domestic machines.”

The production process of Vietnamese agriculture seems to have remained unchanged over the years. The production method is manual, backward, labor-intensive and not yet mechanized (CGH). This sad reality was shared by Mr. Bach Quoc Khang, Institute of Agricultural Mechanics and Post-Harvest Technology: “The level of machinery equipment for Vietnamese agriculture is lower than some countries in the region, mostly small-sized, with low efficiency. The level of CGH equipment is uneven among regions, especially in the highlands, causing the overall labor productivity and agricultural productivity of the whole country to remain low.”

Explaining this, Mr. Doan Xuan Hoa, Vice President of the Vietnam Agricultural Engineering Association, said: "Although the Government has approved the development plan for Vietnam's mechanical engineering industry until 2020, Vietnam still does not have any facilities that can manufacture diesel engines, so Vietnam cannot create a position in manufacturing machinery for agriculture."

Therefore, in the agricultural machinery market, imported products from Japan, China, Korea, Thailand... are dominating nearly 70%, while products manufactured in Vietnam only account for 15 - 20%.

Support domestic machine production

An advanced agriculture must implement CGH and modernization. In fact, in recent times, most of the inventions in the agricultural sector in Vietnam have come from farmers.

Farmer Ta Dinh Huy (born in 1982), in An My village, Thuong Vuc commune, Chuong My district, Hanoi city, is known to farmers across the country for his "12 in 1 made in Vietnam" agricultural machine, with thousands of units sold and even exported to Laos. This machine has functions such as plowing, harrowing, loosening soil, making furrows, sowing seeds... His machine makes use of old materials, waste, and engines from old motorbikes, so it is cheap, from 7 to 20 million VND/unit, suitable for most people's income.

Not only Mr. Huy, but also many farmer “engineers” have appeared across the country. Mr. Doan Xuan Hoa, Vice President of the Vietnam Agricultural Mechanics Association, said: “Farmer engineers have created many good and practical products for farmers, immediately solving pressing problems in life. There are establishments that have developed combine harvesters such as: Phan Tan - Dong Thap; Tu Sang - Tien Giang; Hoang Thang - Can Tho; Bui Van Ngo has a regional-scale rice processing machine...”.

Therefore, according to agricultural experts, instead of investing in large research centers, the State should have policies to support small and medium-sized enterprises to manufacture suitable and cheap equipment and machinery for farmers.

Farmer Ta Dinh Huy said: "I want to cooperate with large enterprises and research institutes to create better engines, enhance the features of the machine and if mass produced, the price will be cheaper, saving costs for farmers and increasing efficiency."

According to the Vietnam Agricultural Mechanics Association, the National Technology Development Fund needs to link research activities with technology transfer, innovate support methods from mainly research institutes to combining research facilities and businesses, creating commercial products.

Regarding this issue, Associate Professor Dr. Chu Van Thien - Institute of Agricultural Mechanics and Post-Harvest Technology proposed: The State should support farmers to directly invest in agricultural machinery in conjunction with encouraging the manufacture of domestic machinery. Although agricultural machinery in Korea and Japan is not cheap, many farmers can still buy it because they are supported. In addition, the State needs to adjust the support level according to Decision 68/2014/QD - TTG in the direction of increasing the support level for domestically produced machinery, encouraging people to produce and consume domestic goods.

According to baotintuc