Nghe An: Planters are scarce, high prices make it difficult to hire people

The hard work of being a rice farmer

In Yen Thanh, there are many groups of 3-5 people who work for hire in other places in the district and neighboring districts. Photo: Thanh Phuc

At 6am, we were present at Chua field, Khanh Thanh commune (Yen Thanh), groups of 3-6 workers were bending over to plant summer-autumn rice. "We have to take advantage of the cool, calm weather to plant, the sun is miserable. Above is the sun, below is the water, we cannot stand on anything", said Ms. Dang Thi Phuc, aplantersin Khanh Thanh said.

Her team has 5 people, since the beginning of the season until now, they have planted dozens of hectares of rice fields in the fields of Khanh Thanh, Long Thanh, Hoa Thanh, Xuan Thanh... The job of "planting rice for work" is very hard, with feet soaked in mud and heads exposed to the sun, some days the temperature reaches 39, 40 degrees Celsius. Bending under the hot sun all day, working continuously from early morning until late at night, the job of planting rice requires workers to have good health.

To avoid the heat, the rice planters have to wake up at 2-3am, when people's faces are still unclear; those who plant in nearby fields have to go home to eat and rest to regain strength; those who plant in far away fields have to bring their own food and rest in the shade of trees or on the edge of the fields. If they are lucky, the homeowner will treat them to lunch.

Each planter is paid 350,000 - 400,000 VND/day or by sao, each sao is 450,000 - 5,500,000 VND. Photo: Thanh Phuc

The job of "selling your face to the ground, selling your back to the sky" is hard, but in return, the rice transplanters earn a decent amount of money with high wages, from 350,000 - 400,000 VND/person/day; at the end of the planting season, some people earn 5-7 million VND.

Having "experienced" in planting rice for hire for dozens of years, Ms. Thai Thi Dung (Hoa Thanh, Yen Thanh) said that planting rice for hire does not worry about unprofitable jobs, it requires effort and not capital, and after finishing the day's work, you get "fresh money" right away.

As for her, the owners of the fields in the district were familiar with her, so from the beginning of the season they called, fixed the price of the day's labor, and set a planting schedule. This person introduced another person, so when the planting season began, she never missed a day of work. "Each day of planting for hire, the planter is paid 350,000 - 400,000 VND/day by the owner, or the owner can contract a field area, the women work together and then divide it among themselves. Each day, we earn a few hundred thousand, if we are healthy, planting at night, we can earn a few hundred, in the countryside that is high," said Ms. Dung.

SEASONAL AGRICULTURAL LABOR SHORTAGE

In addition to hiring workers to plant, field owners have to pull out and shovel the seedlings themselves or hire more workers. Photo: Thanh Phuc

Time spent on worksummer-autumn sowingtook place in a relatively short period of time, almost at the same time asspring rice harvestcausing many farmers to have difficulty hiring workers to plant. Hiring workers is not easy even though the price is much higher than last year.

Mr. Nguyen Dang Phuoc (village 6, Son Thanh commune) and his wife work in Binh Duong, leaving only his elderly parents at home.So this time, he had to go online to find someone to plant rice for him. Mr. Phuoc said: “For the past 5 years, my family has had to hire someone to plant rice. My family has nearly 6 sao of rice fields, we finished renting a machine to plow the soil a few days ago, the seedlings have grown well but we still haven’t hired anyone to plant rice. This year, the cost of planting is high but there is still a shortage of people. They asked for 2.6 million VND for 6 sao (normally it is only 1.8 million VND) but we still have to wait 2-3 days for someone to plant rice.”

Not only Mr. Phuoc, but most farming families, if they do not sow rice, have to hire people to plant. Mrs. Nguyen Thi Chau (Dien Minh commune, Dien Chau district) said that her family only has an elderly couple over 70 years old, all their children work for companies and do business, so there is no one to do the farming. To plant 4 sao of rice fields, she had to ask people to go to other communes and districts to find someone to hire, even asking her children in Ho Chi Minh City to post on social networking sites to hire people to plant, transfer money, and deposit money in advance.

Small, fragmented areas make it difficult to mechanize production. Photo: Thanh Phuc

“The characteristic of the summer-autumn crop is that the season is rushed, the spring rice harvest is completed and the season is started immediately, so the human resources in agricultural production become scarce, while there is not much surplus labor in rural areas. The shortage of labor in agricultural production leads to the consequence that many localities miss the best crop time, rice is susceptible to pests and diseases, low productivity... To limit this situation, a strategic solution is needed. In particular, the introduction of mechanization into production at all stages will overcome the shortage of human resources during the season.”

Mr. Phan Duy Hai - Deputy Head of the Provincial Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection

Demonstration of spring rice planting in Thinh Son commune (Do Luong). Photo: Thanh Phuc

In fact, although the use of machines has many advantages such as: saving the amount of rice seeds, reducing costs, reducing sowing time and especially reducing labor days, reducing transplanting costs... however, the application of machine transplanting in localities faces many difficulties due to the lack of transplanting machines. Moreover, although land consolidation has been implemented, many fields are still fragmented and difficult to use machines for transplanting; internal irrigation has not ensured proactive irrigation; the stage of making seedlings requires high techniques, following the correct instructions and the cost of producing tray seedlings is quite high...

On the other hand, in many places, Party committees and authorities have not really paid attention to new technical advances. In some localities, people's awareness of machine-transplanted rice is still limited, so they have not changed the traditional habit of hand-transplanting, although the cost of hiring traditional hand-transplanting is much higher./.