HCMC – Provinces in the Mekong Delta will step up the cultivation of high-quality and fragrant rice in the winter-spring crop of 2022-2023 due to increasing global demand.
On September 22, a conference was held to discuss the review of the autumn-winter crop in the 2022 season and the production plan implementation for the winter-spring crop 2022-2023 in the southern region.
At the event, Nguyen Ngoc Nam, chairman of the Vietnam Food Association (VFA), said Vietnam’s rice exports reached 4.38 million tons, worth US$2.4 billion in the first eight months of the year, up 20.7% in volume and 9.89% in value year on year.
“It is expected that Vietnam will export some 6.3-6.5 million tons of rice this year,” Nam said.
According to him, Vietnam’s rice exports have recently shifted to fragrant and high-quality rice, focusing on the Dai Thom 8, OM 5451 and OM 18 varieties.
In particular, fragrant rice accounted for 41.2% of total rice exports of 6.2 million tons last year, while high-quality white rice and sticky rice accounted for 37.63% and 16.37%, respectively.
In terms of the consumer market, Vietnamese rice is primarily exported to Asian and African countries.
“The Philippines is the largest rice importer of Vietnam, tailed by China, and the two countries in Africa — Ivory Coast and Ghana in Africa,” Nam explained.
The Philippines imported 2.4 million tons of rice from Vietnam as of August, accounting for roughly half of Vietnam’s total rice exports of nearly 4.8 million tons.
Nam said that Vietnam’s Dai Thom 8, OM 5451 and OM 18 are now unrivaled in the market since India introduced a broken rice export curb and tax imposition on white rice.
Earlier, at this conference, Le Thanh Tung, deputy director of the Crop Production Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that the southern region would sow rice on 1.58 million hectares, covering 1.5 million hectares in the Mekong Delta region in the winter-spring crop of 2022-2023, a drop of 6,890 hectares over the same period.
Accordingly, the Department of Crop Production recommended OM 18, OM 5451, Dai Thom 8, OM 6967 and OM 4900 as the varieties for cultivation for the next winter-spring crop 2022-2023.
Furthermore, it is necessary to focus on sowing early in October 2022 to avoid salinity for approximately 400,000 hectares in provinces, including Long An, Tien Giang, Ben Tre and Tra Vinh. For late sowing areas, the Department of Cultivation suggested ending sowing before January 1, 2023, he added.
