A canal for a field in Tran De District has been dried up for days, revealing depleted cracked ground at the bottom. When droughts occur, freshwater in the fields dries up and salt from nearby sea water invades.
Without access to fresh water, farmers pumped salt-intruded water into the field, damaging the rice crop and reducing production by over 50%.
For the winter-spring rice season for 2023-2024, farmers in Soc Trang planted over 182,000 ha of paddy field, about 8.6% more than official plans. So far, 144,000 ha have been harvested.
The rice is traditionally harvested from mid-April to later in May.
Rice at a field in Tran De District has gone brown and is slowly dying after salt-contaminated water was pumped into the field in an effort to save the plants.
Danh Phuc, 37, brings jugs of freshwater from his home in an attempt to save 2 ha of rice from saline water poisoning. Unfortunately, his buckets amount to just drops in a sea of dry crops.
"This year, I saw that rice prices were high, so I and some other locals took a risk and planned for a big spring-summer rice season. We never expected that after a month, salt intrusion and water shortages would begin killing the rice. We had [no access to freshwater and so had] no choice but to pump salt-intruded water into the field," Phuc said, adding that he had to use pesticides and other plant growth chemicals in hopes of salvaging whatever's left.
About 4 km away from the site, farmer Le Van Het’s field has also been heavily affected by salt intrusion.
In this photograph, Het, 48, manually removes dead rice plants from his 10 ha field.
"If the rice is like this, I've lost everything. Harvesting them now would only result in around 1-2 bags (100 kg), which would not even be worth the cost of renting a combine harvester."
"By now, 3 ha of our family’s rice has been lost, while the other 7 ha has experienced drops in production by 50-70%. We are not sure if we'll be able to sell the surviving crops at high-enough prices," Het said.
Ly Quyen, 48, finds that several patches of paddy in his 1.5 ha field have died due to salinization. The rice is supposed to be harvested at the end of April, but the cost of pumping in fresh or near-fresh water has already risen VND6 million ($239.64) more than the last rice season. The price is unaffordable for many.
By now, over 1,000 ha have been damaged by the lack of freshwater.
Just a few hundred meters away from Quyen's field, 33-year-old Pham Van Tai has to dig a deep hole to recover the little freshwater he has left after the local canal dried out. He then uses pumps to bring the water to his 1.6 ha of rice field.
"I had to abandon 3,000 m2 of rice due to water shortages. The remainder of my rice has suffered a drop of 50-60% in production due to long heat waves and lack of water," he said.
A field in Long Phu District is parched and cracked.
Lam Van Vu, head of the Long Phu District agriculture and rural development department, said high rice prices spurred people to plant more than average amounts of the crop for the spring-summer season, even when authorities warned them not to do so.
"What's done is done,” Vu said. “We have to think of any way we can try to help people harvest what's left of their rice."
He added that his department has been managing valve systems to bring freshwater to the fields and hopefully reduce the amount of damaged rice.
