Implementation of rice transformation technologies to produce high quality rice at village level
- Sectors: Agricultural mechanisation and Product transformation
- Duration: 06/1999 – 12/2005
- Volume: 0.7 Mill. Euro
- Persons/ Months: 25
- Client: Austrian Development Cooperation, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Vienna
- Partner: AGROMAS – Agricultural Machinery Supply Compeny, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Because they lack storage facilities, rice producers in the Mekong Delta are forced to sell their paddy production immediately after harvesting. In addition, quality is poor because of outdated drying and milling techniques. As a result and in spite of the spectacular market success of Vietnamese rice exports, producer prices have not much improved in recent years. A possible solution is to produce high quality rice at village level, in order to avoid middlemen and to pay higher prices to farmers.
The project aims at testing existing Vietnamese transformation technology under user conditions, in order to improve its performance as well as to find out to what extent the local service cooperatives are able to manage industrial units and market the output.
Five cooperatives in An Giang Province in the Mekong Delta have been selected to participate: each one has met the required financial and legal pre-conditions for establishing rice mills, including several drying units. The first cooperative started in April 2002 and is now working successfully, further two rice mills were completed by the end of 2004. All cooperatives acquire the mills on credit, benefiting from a subsidised interest rate.
Simultaneously, research is performed in collaboration with local universities and institutions, concerning the technological appropriateness of the plants, required seed quality and harvesting techniques, as well as the project-s impact on existing farming systems. Local authorities and state-owned rice exporters have offered their support as far as plant establishment and marketing of the output is concerned. The expected result is an increase in producer prices on village level, and an improvement in rice quality. The model should allow for multiplication in the region, on the basis of commercial bank credits and local and regional development funds.