October is the peak month of the year, focusing on harvesting rice crops: Finish harvesting summer-autumn rice, speeding up the harvest of winter rice and starting early harvesting of autumn-winter rice.
By mid-October, localities across the country basically finished the summer-autumn rice production. The whole country’s summer-autumn rice harvest area was estimated at 1,920.4 thousand hectares, an equal to 96.5% over the same period last year, yield reached 55.7 quintals/ha, an increase of 0.9 quintals/ha; the output reached 10.83 million tons, equaled 98.9%. Particularly in the Mekong River Delta, the area of harvest summer-autumn rice reached 1,499.9 thousand hectares, an equal to 95.9%; yield was estimated at 56.2 quintal/ha, an increase of 0.9 quintal/ha. Despite the increased yield due to the effects of drought and salinity, the area of summer-autumn rice in the Mekong River Delta decreased, so production was estimated at 8.57 million tons, a fall of 110.7 thousand tons over the summer-autumn rice previous year.
Along with the harvest of summer-autumn rice, the country harvested 990.7 thousand hectares of winter paddy, made up 62.5% of the total cultivated area and equaled to 97.2%, in comparison with that of over the same period last year. Of which Northern provinces harvested 762.3 thousand hectares, made up 72.5% of cultivated area and equaled to 96.8%; Southern provinces harvested 228.4 thousand hectares, made up 42.7% of cultivated area and equaled to 98.5%. an estimate of this year’s winter rice yield reached 50.7 quintals/hectare, an increase of 0.3 quintals/hectareover the previous year, output reached 8.04 million tons, down by 59.5 thousand tons. Although at the beginning of the crop the weather is unfavorable and droughts on a large scale make difficult to cultivate, in the process of growing and developing rice, rain and sun alternating, the water source is maintained, and the rice plants laid quick, appeared diseases pests were promptly prevented, so the yield increased compared to the previous year’s crop.
Parallel to the summer-autumn rice harvest, as of October 15, 2020, localities in Mekong River Delta cultivated 684.9 thousand hectares of autumn-winter paddy, an equal to 95.9%, in comparison with that of over the same period last year. Up to now, the region harvested 283.7 thousand hectares of winter-autumn paddy, made up 41.4% of total cultivated area and an increase to 3.2% in comparison with that of over the same period last year, the total yield was estimated at 52.2 quintals/hectare, an increase of 0.4 quintals/hectare. The remaining rice area at present is mainly in the green to ripe stage, growing and developing quite well.
Because to the harvest of rice crops in many localities across the country, the the people’s living is still generally stability , farmers is less food shortage in October. October – the month of golden crops, is also the month that many places in the Northern region hold “Golden Season Festival” to celebrate a prosperous season. In addition, the price of rice is a factor marking the transformation of rice production towards increasing production efficiency, taking part in an important contribution to poverty reduction, ensuring national food security and strengthening export.
In the context of complicated developments in the Covid-19 epidemic in countries around the world, Vietnam’s rice exports still maintain the momentum in turnover. The more important factor is the high export price due to the increase in demand for rice purchase and storage of many countries around the world when the Covid-19 epidemic broke out, the requirements of the import market were better implemented. and the type of rice export tends to shift to high value rice. At the time of August 2020, the average export rice price of Vietnam reached the highest level with 502.6 USD/ton, an increase of 3.8% compared to July 2020. By October, the price of 5% broken rice in Vietnam tended to increase from 470 USD/ton at the beginning of the month to about 490 USD/ton at the end of the month. One of the highlights is that the export price of Vietnamese rice to the EU market has reached a record number of more than 1,000 USD/ton as soon as the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) took effect. In the first 10 months of this year, Vietnam exported 5.3 million tons of rice with a turnover of $ 2.6 billion, up to 8.2% over the same period last year.
With the results achievement in the past 10 months, country’s rice production has affirmed its role as a pillar of the economy in the difficult impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, ensuring domestic food demand and pushing the export of rice with improved value, creating a strong spread of Vietnamese “flavor” rice on agricultural product market in the world.