The "farmer engineers"

From their own farming stories, many farmers in Phu Tho have had creative ideas to create and improve agricultural and industrial equipment and machines with high applicability, contributing to reducing labor, improving productivity and quality of crops and livestock products.

The use of agricultural machinery is an effective trend to increase the value of agricultural production. However, the machines manufactured by manufacturers are often large in size, cumbersome to operate, not suitable for small, scattered, unfocused agricultural production, incurring many costs, causing waste for farmers. Based on this shortcoming, in 2020, farmer Hoang Kim Phung (Zone 1, Thanh Ha Commune, Thanh Ba District) studied the mechanism and operating principles of traditional soil milling machines and tested installing some new equipment on the milling rig, helping the machine increase its operating efficiency when it can perform two additional tasks of plowing, furrowing and making beds.

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Leaders of Thanh Ba District Farmers' Association awarded the first prize in the "Technical Innovation of Farmers" contest in Phu Tho province in 2024 to Mr. Hoang Kim Phung.

In fact, for traditional tillage machines, the only function is to plow the soil, loosen the soil, making ridges must be done manually or continue to use ridge making machines, making labor efficiency not high. After implementing the idea, installing 2 more plows (to harrow ripen and make ridges) or 3 plows (to harrow ripen, make ridges, plow furrows) helps facilitate planting trees, sowing seeds in an industrialized direction, can be applied in all fields, equipment and parts can also be disassembled, flexibly moved to different locations.

Mr. Hoang Kim Phung said: In traditional agricultural cultivation, it takes about 8 hours to harrow, make ridges, plow, turn the soil,... on an area of 1 sao of land. In the same time, if using an improved harrow, it can harrow, make ridges, and turn the soil on 10 sao of land, reducing the economic efficiency of 28 labor hours per hectare. Thereby helping farmers save time and costs, creating favorable conditions for timely production.

The Farmer Hoang Kim Phung's improved harrow helps farmers save time and production costs.

With its high efficiency and practical applicability, the solution "Combined harrowing and furrowing machine" of farmer Hoang Kim Phung won first prize in the provincial "Technical Innovation for Farmers" contest in 2024.

The story of "good harvest - low price" still happens when farmers have not grasped the market, have not mastered science and technology. On the other hand, products produced by manual methods sometimes do not fully ensure the factors of quality, price... to compete in the market. Worried about the problem of how to increase the value of local agricultural products, Mr. Pham Ngoc Doanh (Zone 3, Van Lang Commune, Ha Hoa District) researched and came up with the idea of "Technique for processing and packaging cold-dried green pumpkin tea". Applied to actual production, it has initially brought positive results.

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Van Lang green squash is cultivated according to VietGAP standards and processed using industrial methods to increase product value.

Van Lang commune has over 100 hectares of squash growing area, with a stable yield of 4,000 tons/year. This is considered a potential and advantage of the locality in developing squash growing areas. However, the output of the product is always unstable in price, the product quality is uneven, and the economic efficiency is not high. The squash tea product (squash tea) produced by people in the traditional way takes a lot of time, depends on the weather, and factors of nutrition, food hygiene and safety are difficult to ensure... leading to a disadvantage when competing in the market.

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The cold-drying method of zucchini helps preserve its aroma and nutrients, ensuring food hygiene and safety.

In 2020, Mr. Pham Ngoc Doanh - as a member of Duy Khanh Agricultural Construction and Transportation Services Cooperative, cooperated with households to cultivate green squash according to VietGAP standards, with an area of over 30 hectares of green squash to create, manage and develop the collective brand "Van Lang Green Squash". At the same time, to have a stable consumption market, in 2023, Mr. Doanh visited, learned, researched and proposed a solution to "Produce cold-dried green squash tea" locally to increase the value of agricultural products. Mr. Doanh's solution aims to change the way of planting and manual processing, creating safe, highly nutritious green squash tea products, helping to increase labor productivity and product value.

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Freeze-dried winter melon tea product won third prize in the "Technical Innovation for Farmers" contest in Phu Tho province in 2024

After being put into actual production, the cold-drying method of green squash has shown good results, helping to preserve the aroma and nutrients, saving operating labor, not depending on the weather, ensuring food hygiene and safety and extending the preservation time. This method helps create jobs for local workers, increasing the value of agricultural products by about 200% compared to the value of the product before processing.

Although it won a high prize in the 2024 provincial "Technical Innovation for Farmers" contest, according to Mr. Doanh, the technique of processing and packaging freeze-dried green pumpkin tea, although it has initially solved the link between agricultural product consumption and deep processing of agricultural products, still has disadvantages, that is, the method of use still takes a lot of time, requires cooking utensils... In the coming time, it is necessary to upgrade the product "Cold-dried green pumpkin tea" to a more advanced solution, which is "Cold-dried green pumpkin tea in filter bags", to increase the convenience of the product and its spread to the market.

The 2024 "Technical Innovation for Farmers" Contest in Phu Tho province organized by the Provincial Farmers' Association received 32 outstanding technical solutions, selected from 11 district-level Farmers' Associations. The solutions participating in the contest were evaluated as quite diverse, in many fields such as: Mechanics and processing; cultivation, biology and environment; livestock and aquaculture... Dynamic and creative farmers are contributing to changing the habit of manual, small-scale, low-productivity production towards a modern agriculture. Those people are like beautiful flowers in the flower garden blooming under the care of the farmers of the Ancestral Land.

Hoang Giang

Source: https://baophutho.vn/nhung-ky-su-nong-dan-219891.htm