Farmers strictly follow COVID-19 prevention and control measures

Farmers in the Mekong Delta provinces are harvesting the summer-autumn crop and starting autumn-winter crop despite difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing.

Mekong Delta farmers transplan autumn-winter rice crop. Photo: Le Hoang Vu.

On these days, Truong Cong Tang, a farmer in Tan Thanh Commune, Thoi Lai District in Can Tho City, always remembers to wear a facemask and limit talking with others whenever he is working on his rice field.

Like other local farmers, Tang was told to strictly implement the Health Ministry’s 5K (in Vietnamese) message: Khẩu trang (facemask) – Khử khuẩn (disinfection) – Khoảng cách (distance) – Không tụ tập (no gathering) – Khai báo y tế (health declaration) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tang said that this year’s autumn-winter crop, he grew 0.9 ha of OM5451 rice. His rice is 35 days old now. 

Thanks to favourable weather conditions and improved irrigation works, his rice was growing well, he said, adding that he expected to harvest the rice in two months.

“I hoped that the pandemic could be under control when my rice enters harvesting time. The rice price could increase,” he said.

According to Can Tho City”s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the city grew nearly 59,000 ha of rice in this autumn-winter crop. The rice is developing well and few rice diseases have been detected.

Some pests such as yellow apple snail, mouse, brown beetle, thrips, leaf roller, leaf blast disease reportedly appeared in some areas, causing scattered damages.

At this time, as the city is implementing social distancing under Prime Minister’s Directive 16, farmers are asked to strictly take preventive measures to ensure COVID-19 prevention and control.

Tran Thai Nghiem, vice head of the city’s agriculture department said that as the COVID-19 pandemic was developing complicated, the city considered it an opportunity for farmers to further access and apply information technology in farming production.

Instead of physical classes or meetings, the city’s Agriculture 

Service Centre has provided farming techniques and consultation to farmers via radio, TV and social networks like Facebook or Zalo.

Le Huu Toan, vice director of Kien Giang Province’s Agriculture and Rural Development Department said that local farmers have harvested 102,000 ha of summer-autumn rice out of a total of 280,000 ha with average productivity of 5.44 tonnes of ha and a production of 553,000 tonnes.

This month, they will continue to harvest about 45,000 ha to get the other 247,000 tonnes.

“The number of combine harvesters and harvesting workers meets the rice harvesting needs of farmers,” Toan said.

Do Anh Tuan, a farmer in Tan An Commune, Tan Hiep District in Kien Giang Province said that local farmers could still go to work on the field as long as they met COVID-19 prevention and control requirements.

Tuan said that their farms were near their houses, so they did not need to travel far nor pass COVID-19 checkpoints.

Rice seeds and fertilisers were delivered to their farms by agencies, he said.

Farmers were worried most about increased prices of agricultural input materials, particularly fertilisers.

“Due to increasing fertiliser prices, I use less fertiliser and apply the advanced technique as instructed by agriculture agencies to reduce production costs,” he said.

“In summer-autumn crop, I used up to 50 kg of fertilisers for every công ( 1 công = 0.1 ha) but in the autumn-winter crop, I only used 35-40 kg of fertilisers per công,” he said.

From the beginning of this year, Can Tho City’s agricultural sector promoted the use of videos or clips in delivering farming instructions to farmers.

The videos and clips were publicised on electronic portals of relevant agencies or their official pages in the social network.

Instead of organizing technical training classes for groups of only 30-50 farmers each time, now, with the 4.0 technology applications, more farmers could access the instructions.

The city’s agricultural sector is also collaborating with a technological enterprise to launch a farming app on smartphones. 

The app is expected to help connects farmers solve problems relating to farming production or demand for agricultural products.

For example, when crops or livestock get a disease, farmers use their phones to take pictures and upload them to the phone app. Then, the farmers could receive feedback from the app.