Project supports farmers in environmentally friendly rice cultivation

A workshop to announce the results of the project "Mobilization of farmers to apply environmentally friendly rice farming in Vietnam" was held on April 17.

It was attended by Head of Foreign Relations and International Cooperation Department under Central Committee of Vietnam Farmers' Union, Mai Bac My, Project Management Board Director, Nguyen Thi Viet Ha, Deputy Head of External Relations and International Cooperation Department (Central Committee of Vietnam Farmers' Union), also Deputy Director of the Project Management Board, Assoc. Dr. Nguyen Xuan Hong and representatives of Farmers' Associations in 24 localities participating in the project.

According to My, the agricultural sector, specifically rice farming, is currently one of the major sources of CO2 emission.

With the significant role of the rice industry, the change to environmentally friendly farming is an inevitable trend, he noted.

Therefore, the project "Propaganda and mobilization of farmers to apply eco-friendly rice farming" was launched and has been implemented in 40 months from March 2020 to July 2023 in 24 provinces in three regions across the country.

It has been jointly organised by the Central Committee of the Vietnam Farmers' Union and the Organization for Advocacy for Regional Solutions for the Community and Ecosystem (Building Resilience Against Climate Effects - 'BRACE Fund')

The first two years of the project, from February 2020 to February 2022, have achieved valuable results and lessons that are the basis for completing the goals of the project when it ends in 2023, My added.

Project Management Board Director, Nguyen Thi Viet Ha, said that the project has organized six training courses for 142 officials of the Farmers' Union, local agricultural officers, in addition to communication skills training for nearly 200 officers.

Particularly, the project has organized 154 training courses on environmentally friendly rice farming techniques for 2,800 farmers, as well as over 100 media events and seminars to promote and raise awareness about environmentally friendly rice farming for more than 5,000 officials and farmers.

From such training and propaganda process, the project has built a network of technical staff to support more than 2,000 households to adopt environmentally friendly rice farming on an area of more than 860 hectares.

"The new points of the project are based on the study of farmers' behavior. The farmers will be trained with each technique in each crop instead of being trained all in one course. Meanwhile, the documentation is elaborately built and easy to understand, featuring the application of information technology to activities to improve efficiency”, said Ha.

According to Ha, over 2,300 households with more than 7,000 farmers have switched from traditional rice farming to environmentally friendly farming by now.

In Bac Giang Province, the project was implemented in 2 districts, Lang Giang and Yen Dung, resulting in a reduction in the amount of chemical fertilizers by 20-30% and the use of pesticides (reduction in investment costs) while increasing rice yield from 7-8 quintals/ha (yield: 2.3-2.5 quintals/hectare) and economic efficiency from VND8 to 9 million/ha.

According to the chairman of the Bac Giang Farmers' Union, Nguyen Van Thi, this is the most basic foundation for scaling up the project in the locality. Even though its environmental impact is long-term but its economic efficiency is obvious, making the project easy to attract participants, he stressed.

In addition, the farmer households have been aware of producing safe commercial rice, improving the value of goods, increasing exports and protecting human health, which has encouraged other farmers to follow.

In the near future, Bac Giang Province is expected to continue to expand the area implementing the project to two new districts, Yen The and Hiep Hoa.

Besides the investment of the Farmers' Union, the project activities have also received support and additional funding provided by the districts within Bac Giang Province.

Sharing experience, Chairman of Binh Thuan Farmers' Association, Nguyen Phu Hoang said that the project has been implemented by cooperatives and typical households in the region.

“After conducting the project successfully, cooperatives with legal status will easily sign off-take contracts with businesses,” he added.

Hoang suggested that besides promoting activities, farmers that cultivate environmentally-friendly rice varieties also need assistance in packaging and labeling their products,

Other attendees of the workshop, including leaders of the Farmers' Associations of Thai Binh, Quang Nam, Lai Chau Provinces and agricultural experts, agreed on the necessity to promote business linkages in the consumption of environmentally friendly rice products to increase income for rice farmers and expand the project on a wider scale.