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SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM
MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT
COUNTRY REPORT
POST-HARVEST TECHNOLOGY
ON GRAIN IN VIETNAM
(12 to 25 July, 2009)
PREPARED BY:
Mr. Huynh Van Nghiep, Mr. Bui Dac Cuong,
Mr. Bach Tien Tung, Mr. Pham Quang Tung
VIETNAM - 2009
COUNTRY REPORT
POST-HARVEST TECHNOLOGY ON GRAIN IN VIETNAM
1- General background
Vietnam lies on the eastern part of the Indochinese peninsula, is a strip of land shaped
like the letter “S”. China borders it to the north, Laos and Cambodia to the west, the
Eastern Sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the east and south.
Geographical location (main land) has longitude from 102o09’ to 109o30’ East, latitude
from 8o10’ to 23o24’ North. Mainland area is about 331,690 km2, distance (air way)
between the Northernmost point and the Southernmost point is 1,650 km, distance
from East to West at maximum is 600 km in the North, 400 km in the South; at
minimum is 50 km in Quang Binh province of central Vietnam.
Mountains and hills cover two thirds of the mainland. Areas above 500m in altitude
account for 70 percent of the mainland. The most grandiose and highest mountain
ranges lie in the west and northwest of the country.
Viet Nam’s territorial waters make around 1,000,000 km2, with over 3,000 km long
coastline lines. Viet Nam lies along the Indochinese Peninsula and circles the old
southeastern part of the Asian continent with its back turned to the Eastern Sea (Pacific
Ocean). These mountain and sea areas boast a diversity and richness in natural
resources as well as minerals.
In the South West area of Central Vietnam, there is a huge “mountain-highland” at
over 1,000m high, covered by basalt soil ideal for growing tropical and temperate
industrial crops (rubber, tea, coffee and cacao).
Along the coastline, from the North to the South, Vietnam has lots of beautiful
beaches, especially Hạ Long Bay with more than 3,000 islands, is listed by UNESCO
as a World Natural Heritage site.
Jungles along the country are home to rare, precious animals and plants. In addition,
there are some sub-climate regions in Viet Nam including regions with temperate
climate and unique sight-seeing, such as Sa Pa (Lao Cai Province), Da Lat (Lam Dong
province) and plenty of lakes, streams, falls and extraordinary caves.
The mineral coal such as mines, bauxite and precious metal are mainly in the North
and the Central; on the offshore and coastline we have lots of oil field and natural gas.
In the rivers, lakes and territorial waters we have variety of fishes, shrimps and aqua
products
Population is about 86 million people (2008), there are 54 ethnic groups, in which
Kinh is considered as majority race group. There are 64 provinces and municipalities
(Hanoi, Ho Chí Minh City, Hai Phong, Đa Nang and Can Tho).
Vietnam is located in the tropical and temperate zone characterized by high
temperature and humidity all year round, especially in rainy season. The average
temperature is about 28 0C, the average rainfall each year in Hanoi is 1,763 mm, Hue is
2,867 and Hochiminh city is 1,910 mm, and the average air humidity is over 80%,
even 90% in rainy season and in drizzly weather.
2- Review of post-harvest technology situation in Vietnam
Vietnam has a total agricultural area of 9.4 million ha, in which rice area is 4.13
million ha.
Rice cultivated area is about 7.2 million ha/year due to growing double or triple
crop/year. There are two main rice growing seasons per year consist of dry season
begins from November to March, wet season begins from April to July or August.
Some areas in the Mekong delta, farmers can grow 3 crops/year consist of winterspring season (October – Feb); spring-summer season (Feb – May) and summer –
autumn season (June – September), moreover some provinces still grow traditional
rice varieties from July to December or January. Average rice yield is about 4.98 t/ha
and productivity is about 36 million tons (2007). Two main rice growing regions of
Vietnam are Red river delta and Mekong (Cuu Long) river delta, in which Mekong
river delta has 3,7 million ha, yielded about 5,06 t/ha, produced about 18.6 million
tons and contributed about 85% of 5 million tons of exported milled rice (2007), while
the Red river delta has 1,1 million ha, yielded 5,67 t/ha and produced about 6,3 million
tons.
Maize cultivated area is about 1,068 million ha, the average yield obtains about 3,85
t/ha and production is about 4,1 million tons (2007). Maize is growed commonly in
Central High land, and mountainous areas in the central, Northern and southern east
part of Vietnam.
In recent years, agricultural production has been increased rapidly due to applying
advanced agricultural technologies such as new varieties, new cultural practices, and
agricultural mechanization, especially in rice production. However, application of
post-harvest technology on rice and maize is still restricted and losses in post-harvest
operations is relatively high of 13-16%, so post-harvest technology plays an important
role in reducing quantitative and qualitative losses in the coming years.
2.1.Rice harvesting and threshing
According to the Survey of Plant department of
Agricultural and rural Development. Ministry
(2007) showed that, the Mekong River delta had
4800 harvesters consisted of 4500 row reapers
and 300 combine harvesters, however there
were thousands of axial flow threshers were
used accompanied with manual harvesting.
Presently, about 10% of rice area in the Mekong
River delta is harvested by row reapers and
combine harvesters and about 90% is harvested
manually.
90% of farmers harvested manually
Due to low percentage of rice area is harvested by row reapers and combine
harvesters, labor for rice harvesting becomes very critical, situation of labor shortage
in agriculture sector becomes more and more serious, farmers have to hire labor with
high cost, so it can increase production cost and reduce their benefit. Reapers and
combine harvesters also have problems during field operation; repair and sparse parts
for harvesters have not met farmers’ requirement. Harvester operators are also not
trained carefully, so efficiency of harvester use may not be as high as possible. Losses
in these operations are relative ly high, especially in the wet season grain and seed
quality are deteriorated remarkedly.
More than 4000 row reapers used commonly in Vietnam
More than 300 combine harvesters were initially introduced in Vietnam.
After harvesting, rice panicles are bundled and transported manually.
The axial flow thresher is used widely all over Vietnam
At present, farmers’ clubs, farm co-operatives and experienced farmers can afford to
buy agricultural tools and machines to operate on their farms. Moreover, Vietnam
government set up a plan to help farmers to have a low interest bank loan to buy
combine havesters and other agricultural machines, to aim at accelerating agricultural
mechanization in Vietam.
2.2. Rice drying and cleaning
Sun drying is the most common drying method in Vietnam, it is really significant
during sunsight time, especially in the dry season. Farmers can take advantages to dry
their paddy right after threshing, preserve the quality and quantity of rice, use the
available family labor and save money.
Sun drying is the most common drying method in Vietnam
However, at the raining time especially in the wet season, sun drying can not be used
effectively, so rice dryer have been firstly introduced to dry paddy in the Mekong delta
and then some other parts of Vietnam. In the Mekong delta up to now there are about
6,100 dryers in different sizes (equivalent to 1,500 standard dryers of 4 tons/hour/unit),
about 31% of rice was dehumidified by dryers. Most of dryers in Vietnam are flat bed
dryer, simply installed, low costly and can be not controlled completely on grain
quality during drying. Due to lack of dryers used after threshing and paddy central
market, farmers have to either sun dry or transport their paddy to dryer service or sell
their paddy for paddy collectors (about 50% of farmers in the Mekong delta).
Winnowing is mainly done manually or operated by machines such as axial flow
thresher and propeller. Winnowing is commonly done in the northern part of Vietnam
and for seed and farmers’ consumption in the southern part of Vietnam; majority of
dried or fresh paddy in the southern part of Vietnam is sold directly to paddy
collecters.
Manual winnowing
Winnowing machine
2.3. Storage
Almost farmers store their rice for seed, house hold’s consumption and waiting a price
increase. Means of rice storage are mainly PE bags, available local containers such as
woven wood, plastic and metal container … and kept under ambient conditions.
National reserve storages are scattered in the main rice growing regions of Vietnam,
the total volume of rice storage is about 1.9 million tons, while capacity of rice storage
in rice processing companies is limited and now several rice storages that have been
installed with capacity of less than 600,000 tons/unit.
Storage technology is not yet improved completely to meet the requirement for
national reserve storage and rice export. The losses during storage is relatively high
because of damage from rodents and pests, losses in storage is about 2.6% in the
Mekong delta and 2.9% in the Red River delta.
Rice is stored in PE bags
Rice storage
2.4. Milling
There are 620 big rice miller of over 15 – 200 tons/shift and about 300,000 small rice
millers of 0.2 – 1
ton/day, and medium
millers of 1 – 15
ton/shift, have been
installed in both regions
of Mekong delta and
Red delta, about 300
polishing machines of
8,500 tons/shift and 10
color sorting machines
of 36 tons/hour. Milling
capacity is about 20
million tons of paddy
per year can be met for
local consumption and
export requirement.
Small rice millers
Milling manufacture factories of Vietnam and foreign companies have been met the
requirements of rice millers and polisher for the state and private rice processing
companies. However, Vietnam does not have agricultural central markets to buy/sell
paddy in aiming at maintaining paddy quality and farmers’ benefit. The big rice
processing plants with combined rice processing lines from drying to final product of
milled rice in Vietnam is still limited.
Big rice millers
In general, according to Post-harvest technology institute of Vietnam and DANIDA
(2006) showed that, the total losses during post harvest is about 13 – 16%, in which
loss at harvesting is about 1.5%, at threshing is 1.5%, at drying is 2%, at transporting
to storage is 1%, at storing is 5% and at milling is 5%.
3. Constraints of post-harvest technology
Some of contraints in post-harvest technolgy can be summarized as follows:
Field conditions in Vietnam have not yet improved to be met requirements of
agricultural mechanization. Rice cultivated area per house hold in northern part of
Vietnam is very small of 1000 – 2000 m2/house hold, while rice cultivated area/house
hold in Mekong delta is relatively big of 1 – 3 ha, several rice fields are not levelled
uniformly and drainage and irrigation systems have not be performed actively.
Characteristics of some rice varieties are not suitable for using harvesters, some rice
varieties are lodged during heading and maturing stages, and some rice varieties are
easily shed grain during harvesting time. These are constraints need to be solved in
breeding program of new rice varieties.
Vietnam is located in the tropical and temperate zone characterized by high
temperature and humidity all year round, especially in rainy season. So, natural
conditions are difficult to apply agricultural mechanization and can cause deterioration
of grain quality and quantity.
Vietnam is setting up several industrial zones and establishing several governed-state
or private or joint venture enterprises and companies to develop Vietnam’s economy.
These enterprises and companies have attracted and recruited manpowers from urban
to rural areas. Many labors come from the rural areas migrate to the big cities to find
the job, thus lack of labor for agricultural operations especially in harvesting time
becomes more and more critical.
Majority of Vietnamese farmers are still poor and they can not afford to buy the costly
agricultural tools and machines such as rice combine harvester, big rice dryer, big rice
millers.
More existing agricultural tools and machines for post-harvest are still
underdeveloped, number of machines for post-harvest aspect is low, so they can not be
met the more and more developing requirements.
Lack of knowledges on post-harvest technology has resulted in reducing grain quantity
and quality.
Investment for research and development is still restricted, especially in aspect of postharvest technology
4. Government policy on post-harvest technology
To improve the existing drainage-irrigation systems that are suitable for
mechanization.
To breed the new rice varieties having good agronomic traits.
To increase the budget for research and development and introduce widely postharvest technology to the main rice cultivated areas of Mekong delta and Red river
delta, and especlially encourage the big enterprises and companies manufacturing
combine havester, dryer, cleaner, grader and milling machine and means of storage
(warehouse, silos).
To facilitate farmers to have a bank loan with low or zero interest to buy agricultural
tools and machines in stimulus package of the government.
To introduce demonstration models in pilot areas on post-harvest technology
(complete draining-irrigation system, mechanization in land preparation, harvest,
thresh, drying operations), and then to develop the model to another areas.
4. Future prospect
Field conditions are ready for mechanization.
Several promising rice varieties are released to be suitable for harvester use.
Combine harvesters will be used widely and covered mostly on rice cultivated areas in
coming years, when lack of labor becomes seriously because of migration.
Grain drying, cleaning, grading and milling machines and big warehouses, silos will
be used not only in the big rice processing enterprises and companies but also in farm
co-operative and the big house holds.
5. Expectation from training course/future collaboration
The training course on post-harvest technology is a good chance help us to see the
Thailand advanced technologies in post-harvest aspects.
To know basically step by step to research and develop harvester, dryer, cleaner,
grader, rice miller, and to know how these machines have been introduced and used
widely in Thailand.
Some these machines suitale for using in Vietnam will be introduced to our central or
local authorities to be able to have trade contracts or technical exchanges.