After 10 years of steadily increasing rice exports, in 1998 Viet Nam became the world's second biggest exporter of rice with more than 3.8 million tonnes shipped abroad. The country produced 31.8 million tonnes of rice from 4.2 million hectares of land in 1998. It sold rice to 85 foreign companies with 14 annually purchasing at least 200,000 tonnes of rice.
Viet Nam has slowly been catching up over the past few years and recently surpassed the United States. Thailand now still remains the world's largest exporter of rice. However, the process of cultivating rice at the farm level in Viet Nam is more intense than in Thailand with much less time left to fallow. In fact, the Vietnamese will often start to plow their fields for the next planting even as the previous crop is being harvested. The Thais often sit back for a month or two, taking it easy. Although Viet Nam has a smaller area planted to rice than Thailand with improved rice starins, increasing mechanization and better rural logistics, it is quite possible that within the next decade Viet Nam may become the world's largest exporter of this import staple.
The increased volume of rice export was attributed to expanded outlets and network of rice procurement from farmers, investments in more advanced processing and preserving technology, as well as the Government's policies controling the procurement of commercial rice and setting a minimum price for unprocessed rice.
In previous years the prices per tonne of Viet Nam's rice in the world market was usually about US$70 lower than that of Thailand. Vietnamese rice was of a lower quality because of underdeveloped use of modern technologies in rice processing and preserving. This difference in prices was reduced to US$15 or US$20 per tonne in 1997 and 1998 as Viet Nam's export rice has a lower percentage of broken rice.
Another factor contributing to the increased rice export was the remarkable rise of rice output averaging 1.5 million tonnes per year. This is in part a result of using strains of rice with a slightly increased yield. In 1998, 3.76 tonnes of rice was produced per hectare of land. Reseachers note that application of scientific and technical advances in production, particularly in production of new strains, is still limited. According to a survey conducted by the Mekong Delta Rice Research Institute, 64.24 percent of rice was produced by farmers using traditional methods.
Hence, more scientific and technical advances are still required for the one million hectares to grow rice for export and the whole 2.6 million hectares in the Mekong Delta.