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Asia's most successful businesswoman

Tran Ngoc Suong, director of Song Hau Farm, brings home the award for the most prominent businesswoman in Asia

It was not her outward appearance that helped Tran Ngoc Suong win the 2002 Asia-Pacific Impressive Women Award for business category. However, what this 53-year-old businesswoman has done to her farm and the local farming community is really impressive.

"I think my business activities are highly related to the local community," Suong explains about why she was given the title. "That means the results of my work are closely associated with the improvement of the livelihood of a community of 15,000 farmers." More importantly, she adds, the farmers have received and popularized the way of doing business she has instructed them. Suong outdid 15 finalists from 11 countries to claim the title of Asia's most successful businesswoman. "My colleagues [at the event] are all famous businesspeople," recalls Suong.

Being one of the three candidates in the final round, Suong says she did not think she would win. "A competitor of mine was a famed Thai businesswoman who is group president of a sugarcane and hotel conglomerate," Suong said. But when the final outcome was announced, the judging panel had voted for her. More than two years ago, Suong succeeded her late father, Tran Ngoc Hoang, as the director of Song Hau Farm in Vietnam's Mekong Delta province of Can Tho. Hoang founded the 6,000-hectare Song Hau Farm in 1979. In a decade Suong's father and his team had turned the abandoned land into a regional rice basket.

"Yet we realized that we could go to nowhere with only rice monoculture," says Suong. In the early 90s when rice paddy was still a strategic farm produce of the entire nation, Song Hau Farm's management, including Suong, probed an alternative. "Multiple-crop is a must," Suong says.

The strategic shift has translated Song Hau into the region's agricultural hub capable of exporting farm products under Sohafarm trademark to foreign markets. Song Hau Farm's annual revenue reaches some VND3 trillion (US$200 million) while its farming households each earn VND33 million (US$2,100) per year. The farm's food processing factory has won both HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point), the hygienic qualification for food exports, and ISO9002/2000, the quality management system.

Song Hau Farm has its own power generator, a high school and a cultural club. Farmers and their family members are entitled to free medical treatment and social welfare. The children are given education from kindergarten to senior high school.

As Asia's most prominent businesswoman, Suong received a prize worth US$10,000. She later called home to say she would donate the entire prize to poor women and children in Can Tho. Joining Suong at the competition were three other Vietnamese candidates. They were Ha Thi Khiet, chairwoman of the Vietnam Women's Union; Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen, Southeast Asian Games champion; and Tran Thu Ha, director of the Hanoi Conservatory. Other awards for sports, information technology, arts and community were given to winners from the Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, respectively.

The Saigon Times Weekly - December 7, 2002


A way out for rice

Song Hau Farm in Can Tho Province has received two First Labor Orders, and its director Tran Ngoc Suong was entitled Labor Hero. Under Suong's leadership, Song Hau has shaken off rice monoculture to earn an annual export sale of US$50 million. What is the story behind Tran Ngoc Suong and her famous farm ?

In Vietnam, many people have known about Song Hau Farm in the Mekong Delta and Tran Ngoc Suong. Yet only a few know that Song Hau Director Suong was one of the first post-war agricultural engineers graduating from the Can Tho University, the cradle of agriculturists for Vietnam's largest rice basket. Suong also learnt business administration in the former Soviet Union. It is not by chance that Song Hau's 6,000 hectares are able to supply enough rice seeds to the entire 100,000 hectares of Can Tho's export rice area. To do so, Song Hau has set up a seedling farm. This was one of the first establishments in Vietnam to produce seeds in three categories: breeder seeds that have the highest quality; foundation seeds; and certified seeds that are sold to farmers for planting.

This regime has enabled Song Hau to produce rice of high and stable quality suitable for export. Rice trademarked Sohafarm has traveled far and wide to markets worldwide. Hai Dinh, a local farmer, says, "Here [in Song Hau Farm], farmers are prosperous. Ms. Suong is very good at doing business and she is much loved by farmers."

Agreeing with Hai Dinh, Prof. Vo Tong Xuan, who is among the most prominent Vietnamese agriculturists, says, "Vietnam's agricultural sector has found a way out because it has been able to find export markets. Ms. Suong knows what to do. She knows how to apply science and technology to production and processing, and then export products directly, bypassing intermediators. So, it's more beneficial to farmers." Suong's method has worked well and Song Hau exports half of Can Tho Province's rice export volume.

Song Hau Farm pays every month for business and market information it gains from domestic and foreign sources. In 1996, Suong came to the U.S. and spent several months there to learn more about this market. "Song Hau is able to export half a million tons of rice a year," she says. "However, the rice market is very unstable. So, it's hard for farmers to prosper if relying only on rice cultivation. We have to export other processed foods." The core is, emphasizes Suong, to be fully aware of what the world needs and try to satisfy the demands. "That's the solution," she concludes.

Consequently, mushroom, red chili, ginger, shrimp, fish and the like raised by farmers at Song Hau have been processed to reach export standards. Exported Sohafarm rice and processed foods have earned Song Hau more than US$50 million annually. Suong says she alone cannot do all things. Around her is a contingent of some 150 agricultural engineers who devote all their time and efforts to working with farmers. Song Hau has also established close relations with the region's scientific and technological institutions such as the Mekong Delta Rice Institute, Can Tho University, Industrial Crop Institute, and the Southern Agricultural Science Institute.

"Vietnam, currently still an agricultural-based country, has to run like an express train to catch up with neighbors," says Suong. "If not, we will further lag behind."

The Saigon Times Weekly - December 7, 2002