Heavy rains and high tides over the past two weeks have badly affected the summer-autumn rice crop in the Mekong Delta, even as a report sounded dire warnings of paddy fields lost to industrialization and urbanization.

Farmers in Tra Vinh Province have harvested nearly 30,000 hectares of rice, of which 5,000 hectares were harvested during rainy days, the Vietnam News Agency reported Tuesday.

Many farmers in the province have had to sell rice as animal feed at low prices to husbandry farmers after failing to dry the seeds that began to germinate.

The same situation faces more than 52,000 hectares that are ready for harvesting. Farmers rely on sunshine for drying the rice and if the rains continue, they are in trouble.

Authorities in Tra Vinh have instructed concerned agencies to arrange harvest times so that the maximum capacity of existing drying facilities can be utilized. They have also encouraged farmers to help each other in harvesting inundated rice fields.

A downpour on Tuesday in Long An Province submerged nearly 1,500 hectares of crops in several districts.

In Dong Thap Province, flooding in the Mekong River has increased over the past week, threatening to submerge thousands of hectares of rice.

The rising water levels have increased by more than 10 centimeters a day and are 50 centimeters higher than the rice fields in Hong Ngu District at present.

Hong Ngu authorities have mobilized paramilitary forces to work around the clock to protect and enforce the dike system in the district to prevent inundation. Workers and combine harvesters have also been deployed to harvest the rice and the work is expected to be completed by next Monday.

About 4,000 hectares of the total 11,000 hectares of rice fields in Hong Ngu have been harvested.

Shrinking fields

The Plant Cultivation Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development last week warned that rice field acreage had decreased considerably in the Mekong Delta of late.

At least 205,000 hectares of rice fields have been lost to other purposes since 2000, the agency reported.

An average of 20,000 hectares of rice fields have been cleared every year in recent years mainly for the construction of residential areas and industrial parks.

The agency also warned the actual loss of rice fields could be higher because land reclaimed from wastelands and marshes for growing rice had been included while calculating the reduced rice acreage.

There was no land left for any more reclamation, it stressed.

The current rice area of two million hectares in the Mekong Delta has produced a maximum of 20 million tons of rice a year, using advanced cultivation techniques and an average 2.5 seasons per year.

However, the agency said the annual productivity could decrease to around 16 million tons if rice areas continue to be taken for other purposes at the same speed as in the past few years.

The yield could also be reduced by the impacts of storms or floods, and an increase in population would affect food security in the area, it warned.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has estimated rice demand in Vietnam at 32.1 million tons in 2015 and 35.2 million tons in 2020.

Besides the human factor, rising sea levels because of climate change could inundate more rice areas in the delta, the Plant Cultivation Department warned.

Rice fields nationwide are estimated at 4 million hectares in 2010, 100,000 less than in 2007.

This would reduce gradually to a stable area of 3.6 million hectares by 2030, the agency said. However, rice productivity is expected to increase to 39.6 million tons in 2030, by 3.6 million tons higher than in 2007 because of mechanization as well as improvements in irrigation systems.

Total arable area would accordingly reduce from 7.2 million hectares to 6.8 million hectares by 2030, it estimated.

(Source:VNA, TN)