Khammuan seeks customers for rice crop
Khammuan seeks customers for rice crop
Khammuan farmers are seeking customers for their rice and hope to draw up contracts to supply the crop, with the province's Agriculture and Forestry Department saying growers can produce any type of rice if there is a market.
Department Deputy Director Mr Bounchan Xaipanya said their staff have helped farmers to improve their cultivation techniques to ensure they can produce good quality yields.
“We are calling on Lao and overseas companies, enterprises and any other customers to contact us if they want to buy rice. Our department is able to supply any kind of rice you want,” he said.
If contracts can be signed, the department hopes to sell rice in all 10 districts of the province, which has fertile soil suitable for growing the crop.
The department has already entered into a contract with a beverage company to supply 2,000 tonnes of white rice, which it expects to be able to produce from 500 hectares of CR rice.
But the province has the capacity to grow rice on 59,000 hectares, and is hoping more customers will come forward.
Khammuan farmers can grow rice on 10,000 hectares in the dry season with a yield of about 45,000 tonnes, while more than 59,000 hectares can be cultivated in the wet season to yield at least 230,000 tonnes.
Farmers typically grow the Thadokkham 1, 8, 11 and Phon-ngam rice varieties. Mr Bounchan said that if the province did not have the particular rice variety that customers asked for, the department would find out where it was grown and would even import rice in order to secure a contract.
Some of the rice grown in Khammuan is exported to Vietnam. President of the Phoudoy Area Development Rice Mill Group in Mahaxay district, Ms Niphaphone Kingsalath, said Vietnamese purchasers have ordered 1,000 tonnes of rice from the group each month.
But she admitted this was a tall order because at present the group can produce only a little more than 100 tonnes of rice per month.
The group buys rice from about 4,000 farmers, but even this large number cannot produce the 1,000 tonnes a month required by the Vietnamese.
So far this year more than 80 percent of rice fields in Khammuan province have been planted with the crop.
vientiane times
