In a shimmering eatery with colorful reflected lights, a tall charming-eyed man was sitting in front of me playing a piece of music on his saxophone. The melodious sounds from the saxophone may make people think he's a professional, but in fact he remains an amateur and a simple farmer.
It's a surprise that this "barefoot" 37-year-old farmer who only received secondary education is able to invent a variety of machinery for agricultural production. He is Nguyen Hong Chuong living in Lac Thanh Village, Lac Lam Commune, Don Duong District, Lam Dong Province.
He was a little hesitated when I tried to interview him at the end of the show. After a while, he started to reveal about his family. He was born into a farming Christianized Catholic family with 10 brothers and sisters, whose father was a musician in the orchestra of the parish church. For life difficulties, he had to quit school after finishing the eighth grade to go working and playing saxophone at weddings and church. Five years ago, when seeing workers seeding and nursing ineffectively by manual methods, he formed the idea to develop a seed-sowing machine.
Don Duong District has the largest vegetable cultivation area of 17,000 ha in Lam Dong Province, with about 80 nurseries providing vegetable seedlings, the local farmer households. Over the past decade, farmers often manually planted the seedlings, which required a lot of efforts and time. Therefore, his first manufactured seed-sowing machine received great admiration of farmers in Lac Lam Commune.
The machine helps reduce a lot of labor and spare more seeds during sowing process. Plants will grow faster in foam boxes and have their roots less affected. The machine has worked normally for five years, with improved productivity. Most nursery facilities in districts of Don Duong and Duc Trong are using his seed-sow machines.
After the success of see-sowing machine, he continued to invent several other machines such as foam box earth-filling machine, humus blender, compost-making machines, planting pot casting machines, and soil conveyor belts.
When asked how long it took to manufacture a machine, he excitedly said, "It took two months to manufacture a seed-sowing machine while the other machines in just one month. All machine parts were domestically made, which reduced the costs of manufacture by two third compared to the import substitutes."
Nguyen Hong Chuong (rightmost) introduces the seed-sowing machine at Techmart 2012
So far, he has sold nearly 1,000 agricultural machines across the country, mainly in Lam Dong Province and some other northern and central provinces.
Early in 2011, two businesses in Malaysia and Chinese Taipei visited his factory to eye-witness and order. In April 2011, he exported the first seed-sowing machinery to Malaysia, and only 10 days later, the Malaysian side continued to order for five seed-sowing machines, five foam box earth-filling machine with a total value of US$25,900 (more than VND500 million).
He currently owns a 600m2 factory, with 10 employees receiving monthly salaries of VND4 - 4.5 million and planned this year to expand the factory up to 2,000m2 if receiving enough funding support.
"It was a difficult time actually when the initial funding to manufacture the first machine was hardly to source. I used to ask several local farmers to finance me but no one dared to risk. I had then to borrow VND40 million from the local banks plus with my tiny accumulated sum to start," he said.
Nguyen Hong Chuong' story gives a food example of the creative potential in Vietnamese farmers. He, a peasant artist and scientist, has contributed greatly to agricultural production modernization.
Nguyen Hong Chuong received Luong Dinh Cua's Award from the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union's Central Committee in 2008; attended the first National Talent Congress in Hanoi and received the third award for his foam box earth filling machine in 2009./.
