Vietnamese farmer invents machine during stay in Israel

• Vietnamese Veteran and his “homemade” helicopter
• Vietnamese man builds homemade helicopter
• Challenges and opportunities face the Vietnamese agriculture

The machine is one of several made by the 44-year-old man from Ngoc Ky commune of Tu Ky district in Hai Duong province.

Before his success, the inventor once had to take a loss of VND3 million from a vegetable growing project.

Pham Van Hat and his machine. (Photo: Internet)

After three years of implementing the project, in 2010, he became penniless. The businesses which signed contracts underwriting Hat’s vegetables did not buy his products as promised.

Hat then decided to go to Israel as an export worker to escape insolvency. Hat had heard that Israeli used advanced technologies in agriculture with a high income of billions of dong from every hectare of vegetable.

In Israel, discovering that many kinds of work was still done manually, Hat told the owner of the farm where he worked that he would invent a machine that could help ease the manual labor.

It took Hat several months to create a fertilizer spreader. After the machine was put into operation and brought good results, the farm’s owner rewarded him VND200 million. He was invited to the Vietnamese Embassy in Israel and received compliments.

The machine is called ‘seed-putting robot’ instead of ‘sowing machine’ because the machine can put seeds into the places farmers want.

After the invention was recognized by the Israeli State which paid royalties for the right to manufacture the machine, Hat continued making new machines and upgrading existing ones for his boss.

When the boss decided to raise his salary from $1,000 to $2,500, Hat decided to return to Vietnam.

Hat said he thought if he could earn $2,500 a month overseas, he would be able to earn at least $1,000 in his homeland where he could live near his family members and relatives.

Just some days after coming back, Hat heard from the elder brother, who was also a farm owner that he wanted a sowing machine to improve productivity.

Sowing was done manually. It was very difficult to hire workers in his home village, because young people left for the cities, while old people sometimes dropped seeds when sowing.

Only after one year, the first sowing machine was created with many weak points and low productivity of 50 percent. However, the machines that were made later, with many improvements, were good.

Hat said he called the machine ‘seed-putting robot’ instead of ‘sowing machine’ because the machine can put seeds into the places farmers want. The robot can replace 40 workers.

The special robot has been exported to Germany, the US, Singapore and Thailand through different channels.