From early morning, the sound of combine harvesters blending with the joyful laughter and voices of farmers creates a lively picture of labor in the middle of the harvest season.

According to the preliminary assessment of specialized agencies, the winter-spring crop this year has an estimated rice yield of over 63 quintals/ha. The fields of golden ripe rice stretch into the harvest season. Along the intra-field traffic routes, small trucks follow one another to transport harvested paddy alongside harvesters operating continuously from early morning to late evening, representing the familiar harvest season rhythm for farmers in the basin area.

While previously, each harvest season was the most arduous time for farmers, nowadays, promoting mechanization in agricultural production, especially introducing combine harvesters into the fields, has helped free up labor, shorten harvest time, and reduce labor costs. Plots of land that only take a few hours to finish harvesting now have the paddy neatly bagged right in the field, minimizing post-harvest loss.

On the field near Hồng Thanh 7 village, Thanh Nưa commune, hurriedly wiping sweat from his forehead after a turn of the machine, Lò Văn Minh, a hired harvester owner, said: “Previously, only households with large fields hired harvesters, but now even for small plots, people hire them. Manual harvesting is now both difficult to find people for, and the labor cost is high. The harvester is fast, taking only a few dozen minutes to finish a plot.”

According to Lò Văn Minh, the area of fallen rice due to heavy rain and strong winds makes operating the machine more difficult and the harvest time longer compared to standing rice, but machine owners still keep the price the same to support the people. “This season, everyone wants to take advantage of harvesting quickly before the rain comes, so we try to run at full capacity, many days working until late at night before resting,” Lò Văn Minh shared.

The family of Cà Thị Kim, Thanh Nưa commune, planted nearly 1,300m2 of séng cù rice. In previous years, for each harvest season, she had to hire 3 - 4 extra laborers for continuous manual harvesting over 2 days, with a wage of about VND 300,000/person/day. But this year, she decided to hire a harvester at a cost of less than VND 700,000.

“The harvester is very fast, it only takes a moment to finish the whole field. The paddy is packed cleanly in bags and moved to the bank for sun-drying immediately, saving a lot of effort. My family only asked a few more people to help spread the paddy. With sunny weather like this, it only needs about 2 days of sun to dry,” Cà Thị Kim excitedly said.

At the Tiền Phong field area in Mường Thanh ward, for over a week now, the 2 combine harvesters of brothers Vương Hồng Tuế have been operating continuously. This is the farming area of people from Co Cáng, Khá, Pom Loi villages, and some neighboring residential groups. Although the households’ fields are divided into small plots, requiring the harvester to move multiple times, thanks to the relatively synchronously invested intra-field traffic system, operating the machine is much more convenient than before.

Vương Hồng Tuế said he has invested in a combine harvester for over 3 years now. From the beginning of the season until now, he has had almost no days off. “This year, fuel prices and operating costs have increased, so the harvesting price also edged up to about VND 500,000/1,000m2. Even so, people still prioritize hiring machines because it is still more economical than hiring manual labor. The weather has been irregular these past few days, some days raining all day, so whenever it stops, we take the opportunity to work, even at noon,” Vương Hồng Tuế said.

The harvest season also creates seasonal jobs for many local laborers. For a harvester to operate, it requires at least 2 supporting workers to bag, transport the paddy, and coordinate the machine.

Lý A Ký, Pu Nhi commune, who previously worked in construction in Hà Nội, has now returned to his hometown to work as a harvester assistant during the harvest season. “The daily wage is about VND 400,000. On peak days, we work until 11 - 12 at night before resting to keep up with the schedule for the people,” Lý A Ký said.

On the field of Khá village, Mường Thanh ward, the family of Lường Thị Xiên is busy harvesting over 1,000m² of rice. One plot Lường Thị Xiên planted with Gia Lộc ordinary rice, and the other plot is a new type of fragrant sticky rice with characteristics of small grains and sticky cooked rice. The entire area is harvested by machine with a labor cost of nearly VND 600,000.

“The price of paddy this year is about VND 9,000 - 9,500/kg. After harvesting, my family has to quickly prepare the soil right away so that in more than 10 days, we can sow seeds for the new crop,” Lường Thị Xiên shared.

The harvest season atmosphere on the fields in the Mường Thanh basin clearly shows the transformation in local agricultural production. Whereas previously, harvesting mainly relied on human power, now many production stages have been mechanized. Clean, flat intra-field roads help machines move conveniently; each bag of paddy is neatly packed and arranged on the field bank in just a short time. Mechanization not only helps reduce human labor but also improves production efficiency, reduces post-harvest loss, and ensures seasonal schedules.

In conditions of erratic weather, fast and neat machine harvesting helps people limit risks caused by storms, while proactively preparing for the next production crop. Amidst the continuous spinning rhythm of the harvesters on the Mường Thanh field today is the image of an agriculture sector that is gradually transforming towards modernity. Mechanization is now no longer the exclusive choice of a few households but has become an inevitable trend, contributing to improving production efficiency.