Nghe An: Nearly 26 thousand hectares of spring rice planted ahead of schedule

In recent years, farmers have suffered severe crop failures due to their failure to follow the agricultural calendar. The agricultural calendar framework was issued by the Ministry of Agriculture to ensure that rice plants bloom within the safe time frame from April 25 to May 5. However, like previous years, people in many localities still do not strictly follow it.

Up to now, many rice production areas in Dien Chau district have been closed 10-15 days ahead of schedule. Photo: Phu Huong

In cold and rainy weather,Mrs. Ho Thi Lien's family in hamlet 8, Quynh Hau commune (Quynh Luu) still goes to the field to plant rice. Her family has 8 sao, started planting on January 10 and has basically finished so far. She said that every year her family plants early to celebrate Tet comfortably.

This spring crop, Quynh Luu district planted 7,160 hectares of rice. According to the crop calendar, farmers will start planting rice from January 20 onwards. However, similar to previous years, in some communes such as Quynh Hong, Quynh Hau, etc., people started planting rice from January 10, mainly on Thai Xuyen rice variety.

“Up to now, the whole district has planted nearly 2,000 hectares of rice. In the spring crop of 2013, Quynh Luu lost nearly 4,000 hectares of BC15 rice due to early planting, rain and pests when the rice was blooming,” Mr. Ho Huu Phuong, an official of the district’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, worried.

In Quynh Hau and Quynh Hong communes (Quynh Luu), farmers have been planting spring rice since January 10. Photo: Phu Huong

In many other localities such as Nam Dan, Hung Nguyen, Dien Chau, Yen Thanh, Thai Hoa... farmers have also gone to the fields to sow rice 10-15 days earlier than the crop schedule. Yen Thanh district has sown over 6,000 hectares out of a total of 13,000 hectares of spring rice.

The 2019 spring crop is forecasted to have higher temperatures than normal, and all rice varieties are likely to have a shorter growth period. According to the agricultural sector's crop calendar, there will be two rice crops planted before Tet and one crop planted after Tet, to ensure that spring rice differentiates into panicles and ripens in suitable weather; ripening will be concentrated from April 25 to May 5. Particularly in the flooded summer-autumn production areas, spring rice will be arranged to ripen from April 20 to April 25 and short-term varieties will be selected. Accordingly, the first rice crop will be sown from January 5 and transplanted from January 25.

In the 2018 Spring crop, rice blast disease caused severe damage to many rice fields in Hung Nguyen district. Photo: Phu Huong

However, some localities have planted seedlings and transplanted rice too early, from 10 to 15 days, and some areas have even planted rice when the seedlings have only 1.5 leaves, not old enough.

According to statistics from the Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection, as of January 18, the whole province had planted over 25,765 hectares of spring rice. Not only did this lead to a decrease in productivity due to the short photosynthesis period during the yield period, but these areas were also at risk of crop failure due to not being able to avoid the cycle of rice blast disease that began to appear from February 20 every year in the North Central region and crop failure due to late rain and cold at flowering.

Phu Huong