VietNamNet Bridge - Mr. Vo Minh Khai has spent 10 years and all of his savings in researching organic rice to serve the local market and for export.

Khai's organic rice is exported to many countries.

As an agricultural mechanical engineer, Khai learned that rice is not only food – it can also be used to prevent disease. The idea to create Vietnamese rice with high nutritional value struck him. Since then he has researched many paddy varieties to realize his dream of becoming a pioneer in producing organic rice in Vietnam.

Khai has become a real farmer. During his research, he traveled through fields in the most remote parts of the Mekong Delta and the Southeast region to choose the best Vietnamese natural rice varieties. He then planted them to assess their stability through the seasons.

In the process of finding suitable rice varieties, he also went to many regions to find land for growing wet rice without having to use chemical fertilizers or pesticide.

In 2009, Khai decided upon the U Minh District, in the southernmost province of Ca Mau, as the optimal location to develop his organic rice, due to the area’s sparse population and its still-wild natural environment.

Khai then spent three years to level the land, dig canals, improve the soil’s alkalinity and build a rice processing plant. So far his company has a field of about 320 hectares, located in the U Minh Ha fields in Khanh An commune. It specializes in organic rice production, with a closed cultivation process from research to production and processing. Nearly 90 percent of the production process is mechanized.

"Many people advised me to give up this project because it is too costly and time-consuming, and my recovery of capital would be slow. However, from the outset I was determined, and well understood that this path is not easy. Moreover, after experiencing so many ups and downs with the rice, I cannot give it up," Khai says.

Khai says the production process of organic rice must satisfy the standards recognized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and European institutions. The process is regularly monitored by foreign experts from independent units.

According to Khai, to have organic rice of high nutritional value, his company’s department of research and development chose only one ear from a million ears to track over years. The output from one hectare of normal rice is 6-7 tons, but for Khai’s organic variety, it is only 1-2 tons per hectare.

After several years of great effort, in 2013 Khai’s organic rice products were officially available in the domestic market and exported to the UK, Russia, Singapore, France and Germany.

According to Khai, the market for organic rice is large, so his company plans to expand its field by 200 hectares.

"After over 10 years of researching rice, the creation of clean rice of nutritional value without chemicals, and without polluting water resources and soil – this is my most favorite thing," says Khai.

Na Son