Decoding the phenomenon of Son La becoming the fruit granary of the Northwest

Mr. Tran Van Loc - Director of Hung Loc Agricultural Service Cooperative - harvests high quality longan garden, meeting export standards - Photo: C.TUỆ

There was a time when Son La was the capital of corn cultivation with the saying “corn climbs the mountain, the mountain bows its head” precariously in times of famine and fullness. But now corn has given way to mango, custard apple, longan, dragon fruit, strawberry… so that each hectare can bring hundreds of millions to billions of dong to farmers.

International farmers in Son La

Mr. Tran Van Loc - Director of Hung Loc Agricultural Service Cooperative (Chieng Khuong Commune, Song Ma District, Son La) - brought six boxes of mangoes to China to sell. Each box weighed only 20 kilos, and he asked his Chinese friend to bring them to six stores in six different places in China to test consumer tastes.

In less than a few dozen minutes, the mangoes were sold out! The store owner texted to ask for more. This is the Australian mango variety that Mr. Loc grafted onto 2,000 Taiwanese mango trees that are nearly ten years old in his garden.

Mr. Loc said that the new mango variety and new care process that he has researched and applied for the past two years have been successful. Each fruit is golden yellow, round and plump, as yellow as plastic mangoes, with no stains on the skin. “I only have half a hectare, but this year I harvested six tons. And the important thing is that the price at the garden is up to 18,000 VND/kg,” Mr. Loc said.

This old mountain farmer's plan is to export his first container of mangoes to China next season. In the next three years, he will have at least three containers (about 60 tons) of high-quality mangoes exported to the billion-people market.

Mr. Loc has been working with longan for decades now, growing high-quality trees for high prices and export-oriented. He has spent money traveling all over Hung Yen, Hanoi, attending training classes and courses at the Hanoi Agricultural Academy to learn how to graft, propagate and care for longan.

Still the “Mien Thiet” longan variety (a grafted longan variety originating from Hung Yen) that Mr. Loc sold at the beginning of the last season for 48,000 VND/kg. Mr. Loc broke off a bunch of longan, shook it in front of him and explained: “The way I take care of it can produce longan fruits of 40-60 fruits per kilo like this. This is the most expensive variety, and foreign customers compete to buy it.

Type two is from 60 to 85 fruits per kilo. This type is exported the most, while type three, over 85 fruits per kilo, is used for longan. However, the fruit must be bright and absolutely free of fungus and disease.

Mr. Loc bought a longan garden in 2010, and in 2017 decided to establish a cooperative. Up to now, Hung Loc Cooperative has jointly produced 46 hectares of longan, harvesting more than 60 tons of fruit annually.

“In agriculture, we must abandon the old way of doing things! We must find an outlet first. If we want an outlet, we must grow a type of crop that the market accepts. We must grow a small area but with high quality. To do that, we must consider exporting because if we sell at a high price, we will not be able to “eat” it domestically, and if we sell at a low price, we will invisibly reduce our value,” said Mr. Loc.

Mr. Nguyen Tien Hai - Vice Chairman of Song Ma District People's Committee - said that more than ten years ago, the district encouraged people to apply science and technology to increase crop productivity, and in recent years, the district has supported people to increase the quality and value of fruit trees.

“In addition to the province and district policies to support farmers in applying science and technology to planting, caring for and processing fruit trees, promoting and finding output, we are shifting to have people produce according to GlobalGAP standards… Fruit tree products of Song Ma people have been exported to the US, China, Australia and even strict markets such as Europe and New Zealand,” said Mr. Hai.

In the coming time, Son La province will develop raw material areas to serve deep processing, aiming to stabilize 100,000 hectares of fruit trees by 2025 and strive to become a center for processing agricultural products and fruits in the Northwest region.

Mr. Ha Nhu Hue (Director of Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Son La province)

From a corn garden worth a few million to a dragon fruit garden worth hundreds of millions

Mr. Quang Van Trung – Director of An Phu Clean Agriculture Cooperative, in Chieng An Ward, Son La City – is the one who makes dragon fruit produce fruit regularly. Dragon fruit of this cooperative also sells for twice or three times more than dragon fruit grown by others in Son La.

This farmer director quit his job as a hydroelectric engineer with a monthly salary of tens of millions to renovate a corn garden to grow dragon fruit. Trung said that the garden he started his business on back then was a corn garden that could grow more than 1kg of corn seeds, and each crop yielded not enough to feed a litter of five pigs. Yet this garden now yields hundreds of millions of dong from dragon fruit each year.

In 2012, Trung and a friend traveled to Binh Thuan to learn how to grow dragon fruit. More than a year later, he returned with 400 dragon fruit cuttings. Two years later, the first crop of dragon fruit from Quang Van Trung’s garden was plump, with “dragon beards” and bright red. The average selling price was up to 50,000 VND/kg, three times the price of dragon fruit from other gardens.

The garden of 400 dragon fruit trees of Mr. Quang Van Trung, director of An Phu Clean Agricultural Cooperative, earns hundreds of millions each year - Photo: C.TUỆ

In early 2018, Trung established a cooperative with 10 members. To date, the cooperative has 18 members and 28 households associated in production. The total area is only over 40 hectares but the income is high, with some gardens earning no less than 400 million VND/year.

The conditions to join this cooperative are very strict, the most difficult is to follow the correct process, grow clean dragon fruit, use the right techniques, use less pesticides... according to GlobalGAP. "We apply the process, each tree only has about 20 flower heads but on the tree there are always 5 overlapping batches. The fruit must be large and evenly sized and controlled to ripen on the full moon or the beginning of the month, then the price will be high", Mr. Trung revealed.

In addition to dragon fruit, this cooperative also grows plums and custard apples in Mai Son district and Son La city. Currently, Mr. Trung's cooperative also cooperates with Ngoc Hoang Cooperative (Mai Son district) to export dragon fruit to Russia, France, etc. Each year, the cooperative harvests nearly 500 tons of various fruits, earning over 13 billion VND. Members and associated households of the cooperative all have an income of 200 - 500 million VND/year.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/giai-ma-hien-tuong-son-la-thanh-vua-trai-cay-tay-bac-20240829113100785.htm