Vietnam used to be a net rice importer in until the mid eighties of the last century. Since then it became the global rice exporter, second to Thailand only and two time bigger than US rice exports.
Farms sizes are ranging between 0.2 and 2 hectares, a lot of operations are performed manually. But about 40 % of the rice crop land is harvested by combines. It is assumed that by 2015 almost 100 % of the national rice crop will be harvested mechanically.
The key driver for this development is the increase in labor cost: since 2000 real wage rates increased by about 500 %.
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