Rice Production and Processing in Northern Vietnam : A result of field survey in Yen My Town,Hung Yen province

Agriculture in Vietnam is now in the course of restructuring (Izumida, et al., 2000), and marketiong system of farm household products is gradually and steadly transforming(Kawaguchi, 2003). We are interested in making clear the historical process of transformation of marketing system of farm household products in Vietnam both empirically and theoretically. But we have not enough basic data in hand for such study. In this paper we try to make some basic data for marketing system of rice in Vietnam. Seventy households consisting of 30 rice-growing households, 5 collecting households, and 35milling and processing households were surveyed by interview method in Yen My Town-Hung Yen Province, a big rice trading and processing centre in the North. Collectinghouseholds operate in quite big regions that cover many provinces of Red River Delta, of central coast and of Mekong Delta. Each household buys in average per year a volume of 770.5 tons of paddy and 906.5 tons of milled rice. Their main obstacles are poor storing condition, lack of funds, and lack of market information. The average rice processing capacity of milling and processing household is 3366.67tons, 1666.75tons, and 1139tons per year forlarge, medium, and small-scale plants respectively. Lacks of available credits, low rice price, restriction of capacity of power line, narrow surface area used for processing are also contributiong to the difficults in rice processing