Bamboo shoot season in remote areas

From July to early October, many Rai people in Ham Can commune (Ham Thuan Nam district) pack rice, bring water and go to the forest to pick bamboo shoots. Bamboo shoots are a supplementary crop that helps people have an additional source of income, besides agricultural production.

When the rainy season begins, it is also the time when the Rai people here take advantage of their free time to go into the forest to harvest bamboo shoots. From early morning, Ms. Nguyen Thi Binh in village 1 hurriedly prepares rice, water and packs up to go deep into the forest to harvest bamboo shoots to sell to earn extra income to cover daily life. According to Ms. Binh, starting from July, when the rains appear in the forest, it is also the time when people in the area go into the forest to find bamboo shoots to sell. The bamboo shoots that sprout from the ground are harvested, peeled and brought back to sell to earn extra income. Ms. Binh said: "Compared to previous years, the bamboo shoot harvest this year is worse. On lucky days, if you find a lot of bamboo shoots, you can earn about 200,000 - 300,000 VND, and on days when you find few bamboo shoots, you can only earn about 100,000 VND. If you work hard, you can still earn some income." Similarly, many Rai women in the area also take advantage of this time to go into the forest to find bamboo shoots. After a day of searching for bamboo shoots in the forest, Mang Hang and her child harvested more than 15 kg of bamboo shoots. With these bamboo shoots, she sold them for more than 200,000 VND, helping her earn more income to buy daily food for her family and save up to buy school bags and books for her children to prepare for the new school year. According to bamboo shoot pickers, the job of collecting bamboo shoots seems simple but is very hard and sometimes dangerous. Those are the times when they face many uncertainties such as encountering snakes, leeches, being pricked by thorns...

People take bamboo shoots to sell to purchasing points.

According to local people, Ham Can forest has popular types of bamboo shoots named after each type of bamboo such as bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots, stone bamboo shoots, and bamboo shoots. Of these, bamboo shoots are the most valuable and popular because of their sweetness and can be cooked, reheated, and stored for a long time. Therefore, bamboo shoots are bought at the highest price, 16,000 VND/kg, while the remaining types of bamboo shoots are bought at 6,000 - 7,000 VND/kg. After harvesting the bamboo shoots, people often bring them to the purchasing locations to sell as dried bamboo shoots. Therefore, at this time in Ham Can commune, many people also open points to buy fresh bamboo shoots harvested by local people and process them into dried bamboo shoots. According to a bamboo shoot collector in the area, for every 10 kg of fresh bamboo shoots, after being boiled, sliced and dried, the finished product will be 1 kg of dried bamboo shoots. Dried bamboo shoots cost 280,000 VND/kg and dried bamboo shoots cost 150,000 VND/kg. After being dried, the bamboo shoots will be distributed to markets in the province. In particular, dried bamboo shoots are indispensable in Tet dishes, so they are favored and bought a lot by people.

Although the work of harvesting bamboo shoots is hard and tiring, it also brings in some extra income to help the people here during the difficult times waiting for the harvest season in the fields.

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