Chau Giang promotes mechanization of agricultural production

Chau Giang Ward (Duy Tien Town) has a rice production area of ​​nearly 300 hectares. To promote agricultural development, the Party Committee, the government, agricultural service cooperatives (ASCs) and local households are actively promoting mechanization in production stages to help reduce costs and improve farming efficiency.

Since 2015, the ward has deployed rice planting by machine. To mechanize the planting stage, Chau Giang Agricultural Service Cooperative has invested in buying 1 seedling sowing machine and 1 transplanting machine with an initial planting area of ​​about 3 hectares. In the following years, the cooperative continued to invest in buying more transplanting machines (currently there are 4 machines) and more than 20,000 seedling trays to expand the area. In the past 4 years, the area of ​​rice planted by machine in the ward has been maintained from 18 hectares to nearly 30 hectares per crop. Since 2022, the ward has established Dong Ngoai I Cooperative Group, focusing on land with a compact area of ​​10 hectares, applying synchronous mechanization from water collection, land preparation, sowing, spraying pesticides to harvesting. This rice area is linked to seed production with enterprises, helping to increase the value by 10 - 15% compared to before. According to local people, the area applying synchronous mechanization is a model for people to learn and apply to their family production.

Staff of Chau Giang Agricultural Service Cooperative (Duy Tien town) check tray seedlings for machine planting in spring crop 2025.

Entering the 2025 spring rice crop, to create a breakthrough in machine-planted rice, Chau Giang Agricultural Service Cooperative has restructured its tray-planting and machine-planting services. Accordingly, two hand-held transplanters with low productivity were sold. The Cooperative only takes on the area applying synchronous mechanization of Dong Ngoai I Cooperative. For most of the remaining area, the Cooperative's Board of Directors signed a contract with Tan Phong Service and Trade Cooperative (Tan Thanh town - Thanh Liem) to provide tray-planting and machine-planting services (90 hectares of rice). Mr. Luu Van Trung, Director of Chau Giang Agricultural Service Cooperative, said: The area of ​​machine-planted rice this crop has increased more than 3 times compared to the previous spring crop to about 100 hectares. The linkage in the sowing and transplanting stage helps the Cooperative not to worry about preparing tray-planting, which is currently facing difficulties in terms of area for the trays and the capacity of the transplanting machines. This is a condition to accelerate the expansion of the area of ​​machine-planted rice in the area.

Currently, in Chau Giang ward, more than 30% of the rice area has been mechanized in most production stages: water collection, land preparation, sowing and harvesting. Mechanization of production stages in two rice crops has brought about clear efficiency. Specifically, the rice harvesting stage with a combine harvester costs about 100,000 VND/sao, only 30% compared to having to hire manual labor, without the cost of threshing. Rice from the harvester can be transported home and dried immediately. With the sowing stage, people reduce up to 40% of the cost compared to hiring manual labor and do not have to prepare the land for sowing, care for and transport seedlings. With a cost of 300 - 320,000 VND/sao including seed cost (service price depends on each type of seed), people only have to level the field, build wind embankments, apply basal fertilizer and receive the rice field after the transplanting is approved by the residential group and the Agricultural Service Cooperative. Although the use of aircraft to spray pesticides has not been widespread, it has brought about clear results, reducing 30% of the spraying work compared to manual labor, and managing pesticides and pesticide packaging to help protect the environment. More importantly, mechanizing production stages helps free up labor, creating conditions for people to switch to working as workers in enterprises, participating in developing local trade and services, bringing in high income, averaging 5-7 million VND/person/month. According to Mr. Luu Van Trung, in general, mechanizing production stages has helped reduce 30-40% of costs compared to hiring labor. The production season has been accelerated, reducing 50% of the time compared to before. In particular, there is no abandonment of fields due to lack of labor because they have been replaced by machines.

Along with expanding the area of ​​machine-transplanted rice, Chau Giang Agricultural Service Cooperative is calculating to apply the method of spraying plant protection chemicals by remote-controlled aircraft on the entire area to close the mechanization in all stages of production. It is expected that during the crop season, the Cooperative will continue to expand the area of ​​machine-transplanted rice by more than 10 hectares, aiming to apply machine-transplanted rice and implement synchronous mechanization on most of the area in about 2-3 years.

Thanh Nam

Source: https://baohanam.com.vn/kinh-te/nong-nghiep/chau-giang-day-manh-co-gioi-hoa-san-xuat-nong-nghiep-147800.html