Ba Ria-Vung Tau: Agricultural mechanisation benefits local farmers

Ba Ria-Vung Tau (VNA) – The mechanisation of agriculture is currently popular among farmers in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau as this trend has contributed to reducing farming costs and increasing their income.

During the 2020-2021 Winter-Spring crop, the Farmers' Association of Long Dien district cooperated with the Ho Chi Minh City-based Snewrice Joint Stock Company in using drones to spray plant protection chemicals on more than 30 hectares of rice in An Nhut commune. This has helped increase labour productivity by 15-30 times, shorten spraying time, and reduce 30 percent of used pesticide amount compared to normal spraying.

According to Huynh Trung Thanh, Director of the An Nhut Agriculture - Service Cooperative in Long Dien district, spraying with drones not only saves water and pesticides, but also helps reduce rice yield loss from 150-200 kg per hectare compared with that of normal spraying.

In addition, members of the cooperative are also promoting mechanisation in other farming tasks. To date, they have mechanised the entire process of soil preparations and harvesting with different types of machines.

According to statistics from the local agricultural sector, at present, the province has more than 105,000 agricultural machines of 400 types serving the mechanisation of agricultural production, mainly focusing on such stages as soil preparations, irrigation, spraying of pesticides, transportation and exploitation of aquatic products.

Vu Ngoc Dang, Deputy Director of the Rural Development Sub-Department of Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, said that the sub-department has so far provided more than 300 machines and equipment to more than 250 households and cooperatives.

In the coming time, the department will coordinate with localities to continue checking and counting the number of available machines and equipment so as to make production plans with the focus on developing plants and animals which the province has strengths and competitiveness and in accordance with its development planning./.