Growing fruit trees for tourism
Chairman of Hong Giang commune (Luc Ngan district) Bui Duc Van said that from 2019 until now, every fruit harvest season, Ngot village welcomes thousands of tourists to visit and experience.
Customers buy whole fruit trees that have just started to yield fruit, such as lychees, longans, oranges, grapefruits - each season has its own fruit, then they climb up, pick, and handpick the clean fruits that have been cared for by the locals all year round according to organic and VietGap processes...
In addition to the boxes of cool fruit they brought back to the city, they also had photos - beautiful moments of experience of the whole family after a few days off.
The family of Ms. Nguyen Thi Hoa (Yen Hoa ward, Cau Giay district, Hanoi) is one of the familiar visitors to the Luc Ngan lychee region. In 2019, once visiting relatives in Ngọt village (Hong Giang commune) in the season of ripe lychees on the hills of the midlands, she and her husband and 3 children were able to join the locals in harvesting lychees, enjoying the sweet taste of the main crop of lychees right in the garden, a new, exciting feeling spread...
Tourists buy seasonal lychee trees to take care of and harvest the fruit themselves.
“The family trip of several days was very meaningful, the children were educated and experienced. For the first time, they knew where the lychees their parents brought home from the city were grown, how they were grown, and how hard the farmers had to take care of them. Or even how to climb trees, pick the fruit, and how to use a pole with a hook to twist the lychee bunches high up, these were very new life skills for urban children.
After the trip, I saw a big change in my children. They know how to appreciate the value of labor, how to appreciate the results, like a fruit that requires a lot of time and effort to grow," said Ms. Hoa.
After that trip, every year, she plans for the whole family to go to Luc Ngan lychee land to experience, maybe the lychee season, or the orange and grapefruit harvest season... Not only is it a family plan, Ms. Hoa also spreads it to her friends to organize those two-in-one "labor tours" with practical meaning.
Commune Chairman Bui Duc Van was born and raised in Hong Giang commune. His family also has 2 hectares of lychee trees that were left by his ancestors. His family's lychee garden is clean, neat, and straight, and also directly participates in welcoming tourists to the Hong Giang lychee area and the Luc Ngan fruit area.
“The whole commune has 521 hectares of fruit trees. In 2021, despite the peak of the pandemic, the commune's lychee output reached 5,000 tons. The commune's revenue from lychee reached 100 billion VND per year. The commune has more than 2,000 households growing fruit trees, and currently more than 1,000 households have implemented a model of growing trees combined with tourism,” the Chairman of Hong Giang commune proudly said.
Customers take care of the lychee tree they have chosen and own the tree for 1 year until the tree bears fruit again.
Ngọt Hamlet - a hamlet with the largest concentration of citrus trees in the commune. The whole hamlet has 147 households, 100% of whom are ethnic minorities, mainly the San Chi ethnic group (a small branch of the Dao ethnic group).
Mr. Du Van Dung's 3ha lychee garden is located on a gently sloping bowl-shaped hill, nearly 40 years old and has begun to close its canopy. The trails that he meticulously cleared of grass run along the hillsides, winding under the canopy of ancient lychee trees. Before being integrated into tourism, it was a road for people to weed, spray pesticides, and harvest lychees every year. Now, that road has a new function - a tourist road for Bac Giang farmers.
Not only lychees, orange and grapefruit gardens… laden with fruit in Luc Ngan are attracting tourists. Garden tourism is truly a breath of fresh air, spreading excitement in fruit gardens that have always been quiet and deserted, only bustling during harvest seasons.
Farmers who have worked hard in silence are now having new "competitions", besides spending a little to make their gardens fruitful, they also take care of and create beautiful landscapes for their gardens, like colorful flowers that attract butterflies and bees...
However, not every household that grows fruit trees can do tourism. To attract and retain visitors, the garden must be clean, have highlights, have space…, and even have synchronous investment.
The fruit-laden orchards of Bac Giang are opening up a new direction for this locality.
“As the old saying goes, a clean house is cool, a clean bowl makes rice taste better. If you want to do tourism, you must be conscious of tidying up, cleaning up the garden, planting trees organically, not using toxic pesticides… Even the language, social understanding, communication style… of the garden owner must also change, only then can we welcome and retain customers,” Mr. Van shared.
The Commune Chairman continued, “garden tourism” that Hong Giang people often call “litchi garden tourism” brings many benefits: customers come to buy the whole tree, even some regular customers come down at the beginning of the year when the litchi is in flowering season to order the whole tree, the garden owner numbers it, hangs a sign, when the litchi is in fruiting season, or when a specific seasonal disease appears, the garden owner will notify the buyer to come back and check and take care of it…
The attachment to people, nature, the attachment, connection with society, community through lychee trees is more closely. Most importantly, Luc Nam farmers have broadened their vision, learned more experiences, new skills not only in taking care of plants, weeding, fertilizing...
The rise of the largest fruit orchard in the North
Luc Ngan is currently the largest fruit granary in the North. The whole district has a total of more than 28,000 hectares of fruit trees with many specialty trees such as lychee, longan, citrus trees (sweet oranges, yellow-heart oranges, Dien grapefruit, green-skinned grapefruit, Hoang grapefruit...).
In a year, Luc Ngan has 4 fruit seasons attracting tourists. With beautiful designs and high quality, Luc Ngan fruits have positioned their brand in the national market, exported to demanding markets such as the EU, Japan, Korea, America...
Experience harvesting honey raised in lychee garden...
Or travel by buffalo cart on new rural roads to see Luc Ngan lychee gardens stretching along the hills...
Luc Ngan District Party Secretary Nguyen Viet Oanh said that in the locality's orientation for developing garden tourism, tourism is based on agriculture and rural areas. New rural areas are the foundation to support the development of diverse types of tourism with stable quality of destinations, while tourism development is also a solution to promote new rural development.
In Luc Ngan, agricultural tourism activities began to be implemented in small groups spontaneously since 2019. At that time, groups of visitors contacted the orchards themselves, following the fruit harvest season to experience picking fruit by hand, enjoying fruit in the garden, riding a buffalo cart to visit the lush fruit gardens, visit the orchards, beekeeping models, Chu noodle production, etc.
Tourism associated with agriculture and rural areas is a new, good wind blowing through the billion-dollar fruit growing region of Luc Ngan.
To stimulate demand and build a tourism brand for about 60 fruit gardens concentrated in the communes of Nam Duong, Hong Giang, Tan Son, Giap Son, Giap Quy, Thanh Hai, etc., Luc Ngan has promoted many propaganda activities to raise awareness for officials and people.
The district has also developed Plan 159 on promoting and disseminating tourism in Luc Ngan district for the period 2021 - 2025, which focuses on applying digitalization in tourism development.
Besides the orchard, Luc Ngan still has a lot of room to develop tourism with the indigenous cultural potential of 8 ethnic groups, in which many ethnic minorities still retain rich, diverse and unique traditional cultural features such as Tan Son highland markets, Sloong Hao singing festival, San Chi folk songs of Kien Lao commune; Cao Lan folk songs of Deo Gia commune are recognized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism as national intangible cultural heritage.
In addition, with a temperate, cool climate, large forest coverage, and many ecotourism resources such as Khuon Than Lake, Cam Son Lake..., Luc Ngan is expected to be the garden tourism center of the midland and mountainous region of the North.
(Source: Vietnam Agriculture Newspaper)
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