Rice growers leaving their fields over low prices
With rice prices repeatedly slumping over the last two years, many farmers are finding it hard to survive with their paddy fields, and are seeking other jobs.
Even worse, production costs keep soaring even as rice prices drop, sending growers nearly into poverty, while encouraging them to abandon their fields to find another way to earn a livelihood.
The rice price dropped from VND5,300 a kilogram, recorded in September 2012, to only VND3,900 a kg this month, according to data from provincial agriculture departments.
Le Van Lo, a 76-year-old farmer in Cao Lanh District of the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap, has just harvested his crop and sold all the rice, but he is still not happy.
“The money I made from selling the rice is not even enough to repay debts,” he said.
His family has been growing rice for three generations but still “cannot even rake in a single penny of profit,” Lo said bitterly.
At a nearby field, the situation is no better, even though its owner, Chin Toan, who is known as a ‘good grower’ in the locality, can make as much as VND70 million (US$3,328) from growing rice every year.
“Much as it sounds like a big sum, VND70 million is nothing when it is to be divided between five members of the family,” Toan explained as to why he is unable to live comfortably with his paddy field.
Each member thus gets VND1.2 million per month, an amount that is not enough to cover food, medical, and schooling expenses, he said.
Phan Quoc Tien, a Party official in Ba Sao Commune, said there is a paradox at his locality, as farmers with larger fields incur bigger losses.
“It’s all because of the poor rice prices,” he said.
Understandably, farmers who have to lease land are in an even worse situation.
For example, Ba Luc, an An Giang province farmer who had to borrow money to lease a five-hectare paddy field in Dong Thap for production, posted a massive VND40 million loss for the recently harvested summer – autumn crop.
Luc said he wanted to give up, but eventually had to start a new crop in the hope of lower losses due to the two-year contract he had inked.
“I’ll return to An Giang immediately after the contract is due,” he said.
“I may have to go begging on the street to avoid giving up this rice business.”
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