Agricultural products of Dongnai province begin to join in WTO – take the corn as example

Farmers in Xuan Loc district are harvesting corn

 As the province ranking second (after Dac Lac province) nation-wide in term of corn production with the total amount of over 300,000 ton/a year, what are advantages and opportunities for Dongnai province when Vietnam is admitted as a member of WTO?

• Revolution in the corn in Dong Nai.

Presently, the total area of corn growing in Dong Nai is over 70,000 hectares, twice as much as in the year of 1990, average productivity 5 ton/ ha (average national productivity about 3,6 ton /ha). In Xuan Loc district, average output of  corn has achieved over 6 ton/ ha. Many farmers planting corn at club of high productivity in Xuan Loc district have achieved 8- 9 ton/ ha at fall- summer crop and over 10ton/ha at winter- spring crop. Mr. Tran Ly Tuong, one of corn farmers who has achieved 9 ton/ ha at Suot Cao commune ( Xuan Loc district), said with the current new seed corns if the arable land is not so bad and the corn planters take  good care, it is not difficult for the corn to get high productivity.

It is agreed that the revolution in corn in Viet Nam in general and Xuan Loc in particular began in 1992 when Prime minister, Vo Van Kiet, was resented 10,000 ton DK888 seed corns by Thailand government. 2 kilograms of this seed corn have been piloted at Suoi Cat ( Xuan Loc) and harvested 6,5 ton/ ha, 3-4 times higher than that of old seed corns. Ms. Nguyen Thi Ninh, a technology officer of Xuan Loc district, said “at the summing-up conference, on hearing the statistical figure on the of output the new corn, farmers are very astonished”

Then, national program of corn donated 200 kilogram corns of DK888 variety and the district bought 300 kilograms more so that farmers could keep on piloting this new corn in a large scale. Consequently, the productivity of corn achieved 6 ton/ hecta. With the positive result, the following year People’s Committee of Xuan Loc district used the district’s budget to buy 20 tons of this variety corns to sell the corns to farmers on credit and would collect money on harvest. This was a measure to help farmers have chance to approach the new seed corn. In the following years, the markets would start to appear some corn which was created in one side, had the productivity equal to DK888. Since the seed corn created in one side appeared for more than 10 years in Viet Nam, series of the seed corn getting high productivity had, especially the seed corn grown in a short time (under 100 days) such as C919, NK46, NK 54, G 49, DK414, NK66 etc. these kinds of seeds could achieve high productivity about 10 ton/ ha if taken a good care. 

• How is the corn in the future?

Dr. Mai Xuan Trieu, the Director of the Corn Research Institute said, “presently, Vietnam is equal to some Asian countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc in term of corn seed and productivity. However, Viet Nam’s productivity was not as high as China’s ( 5,1 ton/ha in China and 3,6 ton/ha in Viet Nam). In coming time, we will plan to recruit the good seeds having high productivity over 10 ton/ ha in Dong Nai province to collect a large number of the good corn seeds for corn planters”. Mr. Trieu said, although the innovation of the corn has had great achievements, we are still poor  when facing “huge person” in agricultural production of the world. According to experts in agriculture, when the door of WTO is opened and tax is reduced , the corn of USA will take great use of this chance to invade Vietnamese market because American corn gets strong points, high output, great productivity ( average yield about 8- 9 ton/ ha) and low cost price. The competition will be very violent. According to the food processing firms for domestic animals although the corn is imported from USA and has tax, the price of American corn is still cheaper than the price of home corn. The director of agricultural expansion center, Huynh Thanh Vinh, said the home corn will have difficulties joining in competitive environment because the technique of cultivation have ragged, high imput expenses, the management after harvest is weak and the science and technology have not been strongly applied in production so the cost price of the corn is higher than the cost price in USA and Europe. Mr. Vinh said, “ in my opinion, the farmers should plant trees having high effect such as mango, grapefruit, durian and so on instead of the corn if having opportunities. The reason is that the imput expenses of agriculture has got higher and higher, the economic effect of the corn has no more attracted. Moreover, we have to compete the corn brought largely from abroad with cheaper price.

(Translated by THKC)