This article shows you everything you need to know about rice farming in Vietnam as well as how to grow rice in Vietnam
Vietnam rice farming has often been likened to one of those two-basket panniers the Vietnamese use to carry things – they look rather like a justice scale with the fulcrum on the shoulder. This is because the Mekong in the south and the Red River in the north are indeed rice baskets, producing vast quantities of grain that feed the rest of Vietnam.
Vietnam rice (as in all of Asia) is not just that fluffy white stuff in a box that you dig out once a month as an accompaniment to your favourite lemon chicken. Rice is life. Almost no meal goes by without it (as a matter of fact, the Vietnamese often don’t even call it a meal if it doesn’t include rice). The poor mountain Vietnamese say “there is no money” and “there is no rice” interchangeably because if they had money, they would use it to buy rice. In many areas rice is money – it is the traditional currency.
There are two principal ways to grow rice – in wet paddy or on dry hillsides. The paddy rice yields a high tonnage per hectare but requires more labor. The dry rice is usually planted by poor farmers who have no access to water or live on slopes too steep to terrace.
With a few possible variations, these are the steps required to grow rice (assuming the paddy has already been constructed).
If you want to have an in-depth understanding of Vietnamese food culture, rice farming and want to learn how to grow wet rice in Vietnam , let’s book wet rice growing tour with Hanoi Eco Tour. Please note that rice in Vietnam is also very important to Vietnamese way of life and Vietnam is a country with rich wet rice growing culture.