4.32 million yen a year from rice, fish and snails: can a 13-ha Quang Tri farm become a supplier?

In Dong Son ward, Quang Tri Province in central Vietnam, a farm of about 13 ha carries ST25 rice, fish, edible snails, coconut palms, and cattle on a single piece of land, and after deducting all expenses retains more than 700 million dong a year (about 4.32 million yen at 1 yen = about 162 VND). It is run by Dang Van Luan, a former soldier who was discharged in 1988 and then drifted through jobs for 12 years; Dan Viet reported it on July 27, 2026. The design of this farm shows not in yield per area or export value, but in the depth of its employment — 15 permanent workers and about 30 seasonal workers. We break down what a Japanese food buyer considering a central Vietnam production area can read off from this single piece of land.

Five income sources on 13 ha: the content of the farm Dan Viet reported

What the article depicts is a farm Diversified operation. On about 5 of the roughly 13 ha, the aromatic rice ST25 is grown by organic methods, and fish and edible snails are raised on the same water surface. Around the field and pond are planted about 1,000 coconut palms and fruit trees, and livestock-raising also continues. Rather than narrowing the land to one item, it has a structure that divides income sources across three layers — the water surface, its edge, and the outside.

Profit of over 700 million dong a year after deducting all expenses is the figure that became the headline. On top of this ride 15 permanent and about 30 seasonal workers, with wages clearly stated at 7 million to 8 million dong per person per month (about 43,000 to 49,000 yen). The farm is currently advancing investment in raising the quality of its produce and expanding sales-channel partnerships, and is also stepping gradually into using digital tools to spread its products, the article explains.

Twenty years digging 8 ha of public land by hand; in 2019 the design was swapped out

Luan joined the fighting on the northern border as an army soldier and returned to his hometown in 1988. He himself recalls those days this way: "I was an army soldier and joined the war on the northern border to defend the homeland. After returning home in 1988, I did every kind of work to survive. Those days were truly hard." The turning point was 2000, when he borrowed about 8 ha of public land and stepped into running a farm. With no funds to hire people, he dug ponds, built banks, and fixed the land one plot at a time together with his family.

"I still clearly remember the first days after I was able to borrow the land. Everything was by hand, and it took years for the farm to take the form of about 15,000 square meters of farming ponds and a cattle-grazing area," he says. Each time a profit came out he turned the whole of it back into reinvestment, and the area widened to nearly 13 ha. He failed many times from lack of funds and experience, and his wife's health was poor, but he continued while learning from other success cases, the article writes.

The design of what to grow was swapped out in 2019. In this year he steered toward the combination of organic rice farming and aquaculture, reaching today's form. The order — about 20 years spent making the land itself, and then swapping the crops onto it — is the starting point for reading this farm.

Convert the numbers into yen and the true nature of the 700 million dong changes

We re-line the figures that appear in the original article at 1 yen = about 162 VND (as of July 2026). All amounts and headcounts are based on Dan Viet's statements; only the yen conversion is calculated in this article.

What stands out when lined up is the single point that the wages for the 15 permanent workers alone exceed the annual net profit. By simple calculation, 7.78 million to 8.89 million yen drops into the region as wages, while just over 4.32 million yen remains in the operator's hands. This farm is not designed to maximize the operator's take; it is designed to secure the operator's income while running work on the order of 45 people, combining permanent and seasonal workers. When the Japanese side pins down a price, this structure becomes material for estimating the floor of the room for price cuts.

The man himself, the farmers' association, and the newspaper — three evaluations face the same direction

Luan himself speaks of how he treats failure as the axis of his management. "I have always thought that unless you change your way of doing things, you stay poor forever. I have taken losses that were not small, but I made them lessons and continued." As the words of a man who started with neither funds nor experience, the article uses this to explain the turning point.

Another of his roles is the external provision of technique. According to the article, he instructs farmers' association members, within the region and beyond, in production techniques. His view, the article writes, is that success is not measured by economic results alone, but also by many farmers raising production and income on the same land.

The government side's evaluation is out too. Hoang Thi Thuy Hang, chair of the Dong Son ward farmers' association, positioned Luan as a representative example of the outstanding-production-and-management farmers' movement and said: "Over many years, Luan has received certificates of merit from the farmers' association and the provincial people's committee and earned the title of outstanding production-and-management farmer. Going forward, the farmers' association will continue to spread this model so members can learn from it, connecting it to improved production efficiency and income for local farmers."

The third is the way the newspaper itself handles it. Dan Viet applied the colloquial expression "plant this and that, raise them all mixed together" to a subheading and lined up farmers of the same type in the related-articles column. One can see through to a situation in which management that is not single-item specialization passes as one established type in Vietnam's agricultural press.

Three questions Japan's procurement should throw at this farm

What you can buy may not be rice but the fish and snails that come from the same water surface

ST25 is a long-grain aromatic rice known as the variety chosen No. 1 twice, in 2019 and 2023, at the World's Best Rice hosted by The Rice Trader. It was bred by a group including Ho Quang Cua of Soc Trang Province. However, it is a product separate from the short-grain varieties Japan's staple-rice market demands, and at a planting area of about 5 ha it does not easily fit the frame of rice procurement for Japan. On the other hand, the fish and edible snails that come up from the same field and pond still have an open catchment. There are already cases of Vietnamese snails actually moving as an export commodity (A law graduate earns 1.18 million yen a day from sea snails, shipping herb-prepared snails to South Korea), and since they share part of their water surface and feed with rice farming, the build-up of cost is also different from rice. Fixing the entrance of your inquiry to rice means missing where this farm can be put to use.

The word "organic" does not become a price until it is replaced by documents

The original article writes that Luan's rice farming is organic, but neither the certification body's name nor the standard's name appears. To display "organic" within Japan requires Organic JAS grading. Organic produce grown in a country whose equivalence the Japanese government recognizes can bear the Organic JAS mark if accompanied by a certificate issued by that country's government agency or the like, but Vietnam is not among the countries whose equivalence is recognized. In other words, the practical route is for the local producer to apply to a registered overseas certification body registered with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, or to a Japanese registered certification body that certifies abroad, and obtain Organic JAS certification. The first question in negotiations is not price but the presence of certification and the scope of the fields it covers. Advancing an estimate on the premise that "it is organic so it is expensive" without pinning this down means dropping the word at the display stage within Japan.

Seeing it not as a standalone supply source but as an aggregator

The volume that about 5 ha of rice farming and the aquaculture ponds attached to it generate does not reach continuous container-unit supply. What becomes effective here is the fact that Luan teaches farmers within the region and beyond, and the point that the farmers' association has stated a policy of spreading this model. The value seen from the Japanese side lies less in this farm itself than in the fact that a core able to aggregate neighboring farmers using the same method stands in the region. A similar structure appears in the circular farm run by a veteran in Dong Nai Province (A one-handed disabled veteran grows dwarf coconut—is Dong Nai's circular farm a sourcing candidate?), and whether an individual's success becomes the starting point for forming a production area changes the procurement side's estimate.

In the year the provinces merged, the production area's address was rewritten

On July 1, 2025, Quang Binh Province and Quang Tri Province were merged into a new Quang Tri Province. The administrative center is placed in Dong Hoi. Luan's farm in "Dong Son ward, Quang Tri Province" corresponds to the area within the former Dong Hoi City, former Quang Binh Province. Dan Viet's headline being the roundabout phrase "a farmer of Quang Binh, now of Quang Tri" is also because of this merger.

This rewriting bounces back directly onto procurement practice. Certificates of origin exchanged in the past, registration information for cultivation sites, and the addresses printed on business cards and catalogs no longer match the current administrative divisions. The Vietnamese side is advancing the development of tracking via production-area codes and QR (Vietnam's nationwide system for tracking durian by QR, and how Japan's growing-area verification changes), and documents left with the old address come back as the labor of reconciliation. On top of that, central-Vietnam production areas have thinner Japanese-language information than the Mekong Delta or the Red River Delta, and there are increasing scenes where you cannot grasp the positional relationship from the address alone. Now that a year has passed since the merger, there is reason enough to re-sort the address notation, including for existing trading partners.

Basic information to grasp before negotiations

Items not in this table — annual shippable volume, sorting and primary-processing equipment, export track record, the minimum unit of a contract — do not appear in the original article. Unless these are filled in on the first inquiry, evaluation as a production area does not advance.

Summary

What can be drawn from Luan's farm is neither the 13 ha of area nor the 700 million dong of profit, but the order of making the land over 20 years before swapping the crops onto it, and the structure of running wages that exceed the profit. In the central inland there is a producer whose records remain and whose name the local farmers' association puts forward as a point of contact. These two points alone can be used as an entrance in this region, where Japanese-language information is thin.

If you move next, tackling it in the following order reduces wasted effort.

• Inquire with the Dong Son ward farmers' association how many households in the region farm by the same method
• Pin down, in the first exchange, the presence of certification and, if obtaining it, which standard to aim for
• Take estimates of volume and unit price not for rice but for fish and edible snails, treating rice farming as a secondary material
• Re-sort address notation into the post-merger administrative divisions, including existing central-Vietnam trading partners

A route separate from production areas that put out large volumes of a single item is open on the side of a diversified-management farm. Before dropping it from the candidates on the grounds that volume is insufficient, it is worth confirming once whether it is a core that can aggregate.

References: Dân Việt／Báo Pháp Luật Việt Nam／Nhân Dân／JETRO