BusinessA worker carries a bag of rice at a warehouse in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. Vietnam is the world's third largest rice exporter, and the staple importance to Vietnamese culture is palpable in the Mekong Delta. – There is one thing that distinguishes 60-year-old Vo Van Van’s rice fields from a mosaic of thousands of other emerald fields across Long An province in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta: It isn’t entirely flooded.
Vietnam is the world's third-largest rice exporter, and the staple importance to Vietnamese culture is palpable in the Mekong Delta. The fertile patchwork of green fields crisscrossed by silvery waterways has helped stave off famine since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Rice isn't just theIt is molded into noodles and sheets and fermented into wine. In busy markets, motorcyclists lug 10-kilogram bags to their homes. Barges haul mountains of the grain up and down the Mekong River.
Van benefits in various ways. His costs are down while his farm yield is the same. Using organic fertilizer enables him to sell to European markets where customers are willing to pay a premium for organic rice. Best of all, he has time to tend to his own garden.Loc Troi Group CEO Nguyen Duy Thuan said that those methods enable farmers to use 40% less rice seed and 30% less water. Costs for pesticides, fertilizer and labor also are lower.
The Mekong Delta, where 90% of Vietnam's exported rice is farmed, is one of the world's regions most vulnerable to climate change. A. Scores of dams built upstream in China and Laos have reduced the river's flow and the amount of sediment that it carries downriver to the sea. The sea level is rising and turning the river's lower reaches salty. And unsustainable levels of groundwater pumping and sand mining for construction have added to the problems.
The hope is that more countries will follow, though there is no “one-size-fits-all,” said Lewis H. Ziska, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. “The one commonality is that water is needed,” he said, adding that different methods of planting and irrigation can help manage water better.