Vietnam’s first ever Rice Festival was held in the southern province of Hau Giang to promote the country’s rice industry. The festival helped the State and the general public to get a better understanding of how rice is grown and traded. However, the best award for rice growers is to help them escape from poverty.

Dealing with food security is essential for Vietnam during its economic renewal process. Throughout the regional and global economic crisis, rice production helped to balance out economic growth and stabilise the country. Since 2003, Vietnam has been the second biggest rice exporter in the world and is expected to export around 6 million tonnes of rice this year alone. However, rice farmers are the poorest people in society. The Mekong Delta region, which plays a key role in ensuring the nation’s food security, is one of the country’s poorest regions. This is something of paradox. Therefore, the most practical and significant move is to improve rice production, processing and trading to raise the profile of Vietnam’s brand names of rice and its value and especially to help farmers escape from poverty.

How to help farmers avoid losses?

The Government has asked rice traders to ensure that farmers enjoy a 30 percent profit. In fact, traders and intermediate businesses can make a profit 4-5 times higher than farmers. The problem is how to hamonise the benefits between the farmers and traders. Now is the time to change a method of identifying purchasing prices to ensure farmers make a reasonable profit.

It is essential to re-organise the rice marketing system so farmers can sell directly to processing plants and can enjoy the Government’s incentive policies such as interest rate subsidies, credit loans and selling rice at high prices.

By fixing rice prices, the profits from rice exports should be deposited in the export support fund in case there are fluctuations in prices, which can inflict heavy losses on farmers.

Trademark is needed

Farm products will become popular and prestigious if trademarks are given a higher profile. Vietnamese rice businesses have failed to create strong trademarks for their products and as Vietnamese rice is much cheaper than rice from Thailand and other countries, most farmers remain poor.

Despite exporting large volumes, Vietnamese rice is mostly exported to low and medium level markets. Meanwhile, Thailand and Pakistan have taken the lion’s share of the larger rice consuming markets. For instance, some Vietnamese rice is of the same variety and quality by comparison with Thai rice but sold at a far lower price.

In order to build a competitive rice trademark, it is imperative to define the major differences between Vietnamese rice and rice from other countries. In addition, businesses need to create their own trademarks for different kinds of rice.

Increasing quality and standards, with the State’s great support, is the best way of raising the farmers’ status and quality of life.