This year's corn crop is a bumper one, and Tay Ninh farmers are excited. The corn pickers are also busy with their work, working from day to night.
This year's corn crop is a bumper one, and Tay Ninh farmers are excited. The corn pickers are also busy with their work, working from day to night.
Corn farmers have a good harvest
Mr. Vo Van Chon (residing in Binh Luong hamlet, Dong Khoi commune, Chau Thanh district, Tay Ninh province) said that this year, people had a good corn crop.
The corn crop was good due to favorable weather conditions, no unusual heavy rains, and adequate irrigation canal systems.
Most farmers choose to grow corn varieties provided by Syngenta Vietnam Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City), which provides guidance on production processes and guarantees product consumption.
Mr. Chon shared that his family has just finished harvesting 8 hectares of corn, with an average yield of over 8 tons of peeled corn per hectare. With the purchase price guaranteed by the Company at 17,500 VND/kg, after deducting investment costs, the profit is about 80 million VND/ha.
This profit depends on the level of investment and actual crop yield, which can be higher. Therefore, corn growers boldly hire workers to pick corn on a large scale, including teams to load and transport agricultural products to the collection point.
Corn growers who want to hire workers in large numbers must go through the project owner. This person has the role of gathering many local workers, flexibly coordinating labor in a timely manner when corn owners need to harvest the crop quickly on a large scale.
Mr. Pham Van Trang (residing in Mo Cong commune, Tan Bien district) is one of the project owners who gathered many workers for this year's corn crop, about 160 people.
Mr. Trang said that, since the corn plants were still young, he had been wandering around the communes of Mo Cong, Tan Phong, Tan Binh, Tan Lap (Tan Bien district)... to select workers, make lists and save phone numbers.
Most of the people Mr. Trang chose were middle-aged, because the majority of young workers in rural areas are now working in industrial zones. However, Mr. Trang still prioritized choosing people with good health and experience in agricultural production.
Hundreds of workers lined up to pick corn for Mr. Chon, Dong Khoi commune, Chau Thanh district (Tay Ninh province).
During the corn crop, the above mentioned labor force mainly does two main jobs: removing the female corn flags when it is time to pollinate from the male corn flags and harvesting the corn.
At this time, Mr. Trang and his workers are always busy with their work, even having many sleepless nights. In order to meet the labor needs of many corn farmers in the same crop season, Mr. Trang divides the workers into many groups to facilitate coordination of work on different areas.
In general, corn plants at harvest time (about 100 days) are as tall as the shoulders of a person standing to pick the corn. There are also good corn fields that are taller than a person's head, dense with leaves, dirt, and fine "hair" on the dry, crispy corn leaves.
“With the current hot weather, if I let workers go into the field to pick corn, they will easily get heat stroke, sweat a lot, become tired, have difficulty breathing, and not be able to work. There have been some cases of fainting due to picking corn in the sun, so I have to agree with the corn owner to only let workers harvest when it is cool or at night,” said Mr. Trang.
The above labor safety solution is supported by many corn growers, so the corn picking time usually starts from 3pm to the next morning, if the work is finished early, the worker will leave early.
The amount paid by the corn owner to the workers is calculated by the hour (40,000 VND/hour/person), so any tired worker can ask to leave early, depending on their health.
The owner of the field alone is paid twice as much as a worker from the time he goes to the field until he leaves.
The foreman is paid such a large sum of money because he has to do a lot of work: arranging suitable workers in each row of corn, picking corn to help those who are lagging behind, providing drinking water, observing the terrain of the corn field so that workers can arrange rows of corn bags conveniently for trucks to enter the field to transport, coordinating workers promptly when the corn owner needs to speed up the progress...
Harvest corn overnight
Through observing workers picking corn for Mr. Vo Van Chon, we realized that this job is quite hard, requiring experience and good health.
At around 3 p.m., Mr. Trang dispatched more than 50 workers to the corn field. Each worker's tools included an empty barrel (about 20 liters) to hold the corn, a headlamp, a dust mask, anti-scratch gloves, a sharp iron pin with a handle to easily separate the corn husks, and boots to wade through the fields where there was still water and to prevent stepping on poisonous animals or sharp objects.
When arriving at the corn field, Mr. Trang showed the way for the workers to line up horizontally. Everyone had to follow the arrangement of the project owner and could not arbitrarily choose rows of corn with few, low, or short fruits.
This is to distribute the labor and height of each person to suit the corn rows in the field so that the work can go smoothly. Only when the project owner shouts the slogan "break corn, my family" will everyone go to the field to work.
Ms. Vo Thi Mau (residing in Mo Cong commune), a person with 4 years of experience in corn cracking, shared that the speed of corn cracking depends a lot on the skill of peeling the husk and maintaining good health. The corn husk is quickly peeled when the pin is pierced diagonally through the top of the corn cob, combined with the tips of the fingers to tear the husk into two parts and slide the corn horizontally.
Many inexperienced workers stab the core of the tree without piercing the other layer of the bark, so they fumble around peeling each layer, leading to slow work and early loss of stamina. On the other hand, workers must also know how to assess the workload to use their strength appropriately, avoiding the situation of initially using too much strength and then later being exhausted and having to ask for an early leave.
More than 50 people picked corn until about 8 p.m. Realizing that they could not finish the job overnight, Mr. Trang sent about 100 more workers who had just finished picking corn for the field owners in the nearby area to help harvest Mr. Chon's corn.
About 30 minutes later, in Mr. Chon's corn field, there were about 160 people lined up to pick corn. The night sky in the middle of the vast field suddenly became filled with laughter and chatter. A series of flashlights created a long, bright line of light, mixed with the dust from the corn picking activity, making the working environment even more bustling.
“Locals do this work seasonally, after cutting sugarcane, it is time to pick corn and pull cassava. At this time, most of the people in my hamlet (Mo Cong commune, Chau Thanh district, Tay Ninh province) ask to follow Mr. Trang to pick corn. The work is quite hard, everyone creates joy by chatting and laughing to forget the fatigue.
Many nights when there was a shortage of workers, everyone united and worked hard until dawn. We had to fulfill our responsibilities as workers to our employers, to ensure that the corn was harvested on time according to the requirements of the agricultural product buyers," said Nguyen Van Thanh, a corn picker.
After being put into sacks by workers, each weighing about 40kg, the corn is placed in rows in the field, waiting for a group of specialized porters to load it onto tractor trailers and transport it to the assembly point that same night.
This is hard work so this group usually has more than 10 people, taking turns carrying (putting on the shoulders of the carrier) and carrying the corn bags to the tractor, on the trailer there are 3 people arranged to continue carrying and stacking them neatly.
Mr. Vo Van Chon said that because the work is hard, the pay for carrying is calculated per hectare, 1.2 million VND/ha, and the workers in the group divide this amount among themselves. The cost of the vehicle alone is 800,000 VND/ha, including transporting to the gathering point and carrying the corn bags on the trailer down to the ground and stacking them in rows.
Mr. Chon's corn picking and carrying work diligently until about 3 a.m. to finish harvesting his large corn acreage.
Everyone was exhausted, their bodies were covered in dust, their eyes were dark from lack of sleep, but they were still laughing and joking. Mr. Trang, the leader of the farm, shouted loudly: "Everyone, gather here and take a nap to regain your strength so that tomorrow afternoon we can continue our journey to pick corn."
Source: https://danviet.vn/trong-bap-ra-trai-giua-than-vi-sao-ca-lang-o-tay-ninh-giua-dem-bat-den-pin-keo-nhau-ra-dong-be-bap-20250310102626208.htm
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