Vietnam is the third largest exporting rice country in the world. In 2016, rice cultivation in Vietnam emits more than 60 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The most common rice cultivation practice of the Vietnamese people is to continuously flood the field in both rainy and dry seasons. This continuous flooding produces large amounts of methane greenhouse gases (CH4) by the anaerobic digestion (phân hủy yếm khí) of straw and organic waste from Methanogensis microorganism.
In order to guarantee the harvested rice yield, the farmers often apply excess nitrogenous fertilizer which is soluble in water (Urea, diammonium phosphate and Ammonium sulphate) on the farmland 3 to 5 times per crop. This leads to large amounts of ammonia and nitrous oxide (N2O) gases emitted to the atmosphere. In addition, the burning of straw for the purpose of clearing the fields after harvesting emits a large amount of CO2 and volatile organic compounds (VOC) causing serious environmental pollution.
In addition, the Vietnam industrialization in the past few decades has aged the peasantry and increased the labor wages in the agricultural sector as many young citizens have migrated to cities to find jobs which will help them have higher incomes and better living conditions. This issue provides a good opportunity to research, develop and produce Internet of things (IOT) devices applying to intelligent agriculture in order to automate the water and fertilizer management as well as make the implantation and fertilization methods more effective, and assist farmers in coping with climate change and labor shortages.
Therefore, RYNAN Technologies Vietnam has built and joined PoC2 with the model of "Smart rice cultivation".
Combining with the use of RYNAN intelligent fertilizer, Yanmar VP6D improved fertilizer machine (máy cấy vùi phân cải tiến ) and RYNAN intermittently dry flooded system (hệ thống ngập khô xen kẽ thông minh) in this pilot project will minimize greenhouse gas emissions methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) and increase yields for three reasons:
1) Reduce 50% of Nitrogen Use: RYNAN Smart Fertilizer (Phân bón thông minh) is a controlled slow-release fertilizer (Phân bón tan chậm có kiểm soát) that contains inorganic, organic and microorganic nutrients. The amount of usable fertilizer is just 50% of the normal amount of fertilizer without reducing yield.
2) Increase nutrient efficiency of the fertilizer: Combining with Yanmar VP6D improved fertilizer machine, RYNAN intelligent fertilizer will be buried 5 cm to the ground in the rice transplant to save nutrient.
3) Managing water by Alternate Wetting and Drying Irrigation Method (AWD): Using RYNAN Alternate Wetting and Drying Irrigation system, the water management in rice cultivation is easier and more accurate, and helps reduce more than 40% methane emissions and more than 30% water used.
However, in order to expand the scale and capacity of providing the services of rice cultivation - fertilizers - micro-organisms / pesticides which are friendly to the environment, enterprise needs to attract capital from investors and change the perception of a farmer's part so that the farmers can apply and cultivate with the new process.
VCIC, in addition to financial support, has trained, guided enterprise of business administration, orientation building, communication support and investment connections to help Rynan develop its own business model.
Rynan's model helps to increase the yield and farmers’ income by 30%, reduce fertilizer use by 50%, reduce workdays for applying fertilizer by 75%, reduce rice seed yield by 70%, reduce the price of rice cultivation by about 15%. In addition, the project will help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50% and reduce water pollution by more than 50%. Moreover, the company’s revenue has increased to about 40% since it joined the project and in 9/2018, Prof. Nguyen Thanh My - Founder and CEO of Rynan is one of the three Vietnam startup leaders out of a total of 80 startups invited to attend the World Economic Forum on ASEAN in Hanoi.