AFTER 27 YEARS OF LEAVING HIS HOMETOWN, DONG THAP made a career by growing rice, and Dang Minh Vuong bought 30 hectares, becoming a billionaire by his thrift, suffering, and hard work.

Born in the Lai Vung district, Mr. Vuong’s family, 49 years old, lives by farming, but the family of more than 10 people only has a dozen pieces of land (one hectare) as capital, only enough for three meals. After getting married, the difficult life made the young man not stop thinking about the future. Once a neighbor invited him to go to work on a career, and he discussed with the adults in the family to ask for a trip.

At the end of 1996, he quickly gathered two suits and then went to Phu Cuong commune, Tam Nong district, nearly 60 km from his house, to buy a land plot of one hectare. In the middle of an empty field, Vuong took his wife and daughter in the cradle, built a temporary hut to set up a business.

Mr. Minh Vuong – passion for rice cultivation helped him have a land plot with hundreds of employees. Photo: Ngoc Tai

His wife – Mrs. Nguyen Thi Luc (49 years old) vividly remembers the field that day, immense without bushes, only a few leaf huts of expatriates who made a living by growing rice. Family life at that time lacked enough surface from drinking water to firewood for cooking.

In the morning, she woke up very early to take the water from the buffalo’s footprints to bring back to use, open the grass to dry for fuel. Having an early meal with a bunch of copperfish caught late the night before, the young couple brought their children to put them in a small bowl on the nearby dike while looking after their children while working in the fields. “For the first few months, I cried every day, but only he persevered in clinging to the fields, believing that he could eat only if he worked,” recalled Mrs. Luc.

As a good rice farmer, Mr. Vuong quickly made a profit from the first rice crop. After setting aside a few bags of rice to eat over the next three months, the remainder of the money he and his wife did not touch. In the water season that year, the temporary hut was blown away by the wind in the middle of the night. Three people huddled in the rain, waiting for morning to rebuild the hut.

Another time the rice was just a few days old, and the rain did not stop causing the young seedlings to drift ashore. Impatient, Mr. Vuong covered the banks with the rain, ran the pump to drain the water, forgetting both cold and hunger. Sweat and tears poured into the field, so the young farmer treasured the rice he produced and did not dare to waste even a penny. “From empty hands to 300 fields (30 hectares) today, my wife and I did not dare to buy a lottery ticket, sit at a coffee shop and drink a cup of coffee,” said Mrs. Luc.

Not only farming, this exiled couple also do all kinds of jobs from hired labor to casting nets to earn extra income. For several years, Mr. Vuong caught fish at night, his wife stayed at home to pick cowpeas planted behind the house and bring them to the market. Every day, when there was no stock, Mrs. Luc wore a bowl of fish and vegetables around the residential area begging each buyer.

Mr. Vuong in a field full of seeds that are about to be harvested. Photo: Nguyen Khanh

When the whole neighborhood was busy catching snails and selling them to merchants who went to the city, they took advantage of the night to catch snails, making their hands and feet sore. It is the thrift that makes the young couple always have a surplus in the house, when anyone offers to sell their land, they make a deposit to buy it right away. It only took two years for them to buy an additional 3.5 hectares for 4.5 gold per share (1,000 m2) by installment payment. With nearly 5 hectares of fields, with an average of three rice crops, he could afford to buy 3 more hectares of land.

The following plots of land were also bought with the profit from rice cultivation. When they were short, they carried red books, plugged into banks, borrowed enough, and then paid in installments. More than a decade ago, they had nearly a hundred public lands in their hands. The production stages on the field are done by both, rarely hired, in order to make a profit. In Go Cat hamlet, it is rare for anyone to get rice through Mr. Vuong. His fields yield an average of 7-10 tons per hectare. In the years when the rice was hit, the rice was dried on the dike for more than a kilometer.

To make farming easier, Mr. Vuong researched and made a number of machines such as spraying machines that took advantage of canoes pulled in the middle of the ditch, with two long spray rods on either side. With this device, the spraying time is shortened without the need to hire more people. When harvesting rice, if the price is low, they try to dry it and store it until the market “warms up” before selling.

In the rice barn built next to her house, Mrs. Luc still keeps a pair of desks and rakes – a rice drying tool that was used many years ago. They have to be three times bigger than the normal type, but she and her husband still say that it is “open lung” to spend the whole season, because only this type can collect hundreds of tons of rice, avoiding when it rains.

For nearly three decades, he and his wife have owned tens of billions of dong and 30 hectares of field. They also raised their eldest daughter to study well, now working as a doctor at a hospital near her old hometown.

In recent years, Mr. Vuong and his wife have sold fresh rice, no longer drying the rice, but still keep the table and rake table 3 times larger than usual, as a memento of difficult times. Photo: Ngoc Tai

At the beginning of 2023, the previously lonely Go Cat hamlet field is now crowded with people. Mr. Vuong’s tattered hut roof was replaced with a solid walled house every day. The young billionaire lives an idyllic life, goes to the fields every day, does many steps by his own hands, but is more leisurely when applying watering by plane, cutting rice, and plowing the land with modern machines. While many farmers give up the field to the garden, he and his wife still firmly believe in rice. With 30 hectares of land for three crops, he earns about 1.5 billion VND per year.($1=24,000 VND)

“If you have passion, you can buy a lot of lands, but the more land, the more extreme. The field is very ham, the rice is ripe with tamarind, golden color, even visiting twice a day is not enough”, the farmer smiled kindly and said he would stick with it. with rice fields and rice cultivation, has no intention of resting or buying a tall house with a wide door in the street, even though he is more than capable of doing it.

Mr. Nguyen Van Sang, Secretary of Phu Cuong Commune, commented that Mr. Vuong is a good farmer in the locality, representing the spirit of overcoming difficulties and getting rich from the fields.

 ( According to vnexpress )