Farmers face many disadvantages in the summer-autumn rice crop.

Recently, farmers producing summer-autumn rice crop 2025 in Can Tho City have faced many difficulties due to unfavorable production conditions, along with high prices of fertilizers and many input costs for production. Now that the ripe rice has entered harvest, farmers continue to face difficulties due to frequent rains, while rice prices have decreased.

Summer-autumn rice harvest 2025 in Thoi Lai district.

Many disadvantages

In the summer-autumn crop, production conditions are unfavorable due to frequent hot weather with high temperatures and fields that are not fertilized with alluvium, so rice productivity in this crop is difficult to achieve high. Meanwhile, production costs increase because farmers have to spend more on care, pumping water to irrigate rice and increasing the amount of fertilizer used compared to the winter-spring crop. Through the reality of summer-autumn rice production in 2025, it shows that farmers have paid attention to increasing the application of machinery and scientific and technical advances to reduce production costs and improve product quality and selling prices. However, because the price of fertilizer and many input costs such as gasoline, electricity, labor, and machinery rental, etc. tend to increase and remain high, the cost of rice production has increased significantly compared to previous rice crops.

Mr. Nguyen Van Phi, who grows more than 2 hectares of rice in Thanh Phu commune, Co Do district, said: "This summer-autumn crop, the production cost has increased by at least 300,000-500,000 VND/cong compared to the winter-spring crop due to the high prices of many types of fertilizers compared to before and the dry weather at the beginning of the crop, farmers have to spend money on pumping water and preventing weeds. In the last winter-spring crop, the rice yield reached over 1 ton of fresh rice/cong, but this crop I predict the yield will only reach about 700 kg/cong again. Farmers really hope that the summer rice will be sold at a high price to ensure good profits. However, recently, the price of rice has tended to decrease, farmers cannot help but worry, especially those farmers whose rice is about to be harvested but do not have output contracts from units, businesses and traders." Currently, many farmers who have received deposits to "fix the price" to sell rice to traders are also quite worried about the rice not being harvested and consumed in time because there is a situation where traders are slow to come to buy and demand a price reduction. Mr. Nguyen Thanh Phong, residing in Thoi Phong A hamlet, Thoi Lai town, Thoi Lai district, said: "At this time, many summer-autumn rice crops in the district have entered the harvest. However, the price of rice has suddenly tended to decrease when entering the harvest season. Many traders, although they had previously deposited to buy fresh rice OM 5451 at a price of 6,000-6,200 VND/kg, now seeing the price of rice on the market decrease, have also demanded a price reduction of 100 VND/kg, otherwise they will not buy". According to Mr. Phong, this crop, his 11 hectares of rice fields were planted with the OM 5451 variety and about 3 weeks ago, he received a deposit of 300,000 VND/hectare with the price of fresh rice sold to traders at 6,000 VND/kg. However, by June 4, the rice had ripened 2-3 days past the harvest date (the rice was 98 days old) and the traders had not yet sent a combine harvester to harvest the rice. To avoid the situation of ripe rice being left in the field for too long, reducing its yield and quality, he had to call the traders to come and buy and accept a price reduction of 100 VND/kg, down to 5,900 VND/kg.

Farmers seek to minimize risk

In the 2025 summer-autumn crop, farmers in Can Tho City have planted more than 70,764 hectares of rice, reaching 100.8% of the plan. To ensure timely harvest and consumption of rice in the context of falling rice prices, farmers in many districts have been actively interested in strengthening links, connections and contacts with combine harvester owners and units, businesses and traders. Learn and grasp information about rice prices to promptly discuss and negotiate selling prices, and proactively take solutions to ensure rice harvesting by machine. Specifically, apply appropriate care and fertilization measures to reduce rice lodging and actively drain water from rice fields to keep the fields dry, less muddy, and facilitate the use of mechanical machinery to harvest rice. Many farmers also accept the loss, willing to reduce the selling price of rice a little to share the difficulties with traders in order to have long-term cooperation, thereby also promoting timely harvesting and consumption of rice, avoiding damage to ripe rice left in the field for too long during the rainy season.

In the summer-autumn crop of 2025, Mr. Nguyen Van Mai in Thoi Binh B hamlet, Thoi Thanh commune, Thoi Lai district produced 16 hectares of rice, including 9 hectares of OM 5451 variety and 7 hectares of OM 18 variety. Mr. Mai said: "Thanks to proactively draining water from the rice fields quite early, I have recently harvested all the rice quite smoothly with a combine harvester. This crop's rice rarely falls, so the cost of renting the machine is the same as previous crops, at a price of 320,000 VND/hectare, and the rice was purchased by traders immediately after harvest on the same day." According to Mr. Mai, he sold rice at 6,200 VND/kg of OM 5451 rice variety and 6,600 VND/kg of OM 18 rice variety. However, near the harvest date, the price of rice on the market dropped sharply by 300-500 VND/kg compared to before, traders complained of difficulties and asked to lower the purchase price to 100 VND/kg and I accepted to share the difficulties with them and also wanted the rice to be harvested on time. However, he still had an average profit of about 2 million VND/cong of rice. According to Mr. Huynh Thanh Binh in Thoi Thuan B hamlet, town, Thoi Lai district, this crop he had 3 cong of rice sown with OM 5451 variety and he received a deposit from traders at 6,200 VND/kg. However, when it was time to harvest, he lowered the price to 6,100 VND/kg, but because the rice yield this season was not high, only about 600 kg/cong, he could only make a profit of 1 million VND/cong.

The fall in rice prices and the complicated weather conditions with frequent rains have made it more or less difficult to harvest rice. However, in general, most of the summer-autumn rice is harvested by machines, which saves a lot of time and money. Rice is purchased fresh by traders and businesses immediately after harvest.

Article and photos: KHANH TRUNG

Source: https://baocantho.com.vn/nong-dan-gap-nhieu-bat-loi-trong-vu-lua-he-thu-a187345.html