Green agriculture – the inevitable trend

Phuong Nam’s early-ripening lychee granted VietGAP certification

Through many years of cultivation, lychee is known to be a crop with high economic efficiency in Phuong Nam ward (Uong Bi city). Thanks to growing lychee in accordance with VietGAP and organic direction, Phuong Nam's early-ripening lychee has the opportunity to come to prestigious domestic and international distribution channels. The economic benefits from lychee increase with each passing day.

The people of Phuong Nam have reached the skilled level of lychee cultivation. Coming to a clear realization that Phuong Nam lychee has the advantage of early ripening time, the people of this land are very diligent in caring for the trees, monitoring, timely adjusting and supplementing nutrition if needed, and preventing potential pests and diseases.

And since the entire Phuong Nam lychee area of 375 ha applies the VietGAP procedure, growers become more strict in terms of the after-spraying isolation period. They do not harvest when the time is not up to the prescribed requirement.

Phuong Nam lychee growers have learned by heart the lesson of "having friends when buying, having markets when selling", cleverly applying the method of spacing out the harvest time to ensure that lychees are harvested when their ripeness is at its peak, the fruits are delicious and beautiful to the eyes. The ward’s revenue and profit thus skyrocket thanks to early-ripening lychee.

In the last lychee crop, the whole Phuong Nam ward’s lychee output experienced a slight decrease of 20% (from 2,500 tons to 2,000 tons compared to the previous year), but the revenue struck a remarkable 40% increase with the reason being the increase in the purchasing price. The average selling price of the whole crop is VND 26,000/kg, while the selling price at the beginning of the crop reached VND 40,000 – 50,000/kg.

Aiming toward clean and safe lychee production, many lychee growers has coordinated with Phuong Nam Sub-Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection to pilot the implementation of data encryption model for Phuong Nam early-ripening lychee growing area according to the Origin Tracing and Authenticity System (OTAS) standards.

On the basis that the entire Phuong Nam early-ripening lychee area is VietGAP-certified, the local functional unit will review, re-evaluate and synthesize previously granted parameters to update to the OTAS software. International customers can use this software to trace the products’ origin.

Formation of the clean agriculture mindset

Over the past time, Dong Trieu Town Farmers' Union has accompanied, supported and guided its members to implement safe agroproduction models, aiming toward modern, sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture.

"One of the Union’s key tasks recently is to implement the model 'Mobilizing farmers to participate in the organic production chain and e-commerce in the 2021-2025 period' within the town’s territory," said Vice Chairman of Dong Trieu Town Farmers' Union Nguyen Van Thin.

Being the unit leading the model, the Farmers' Union organizes extensive information for officials, members and people of the whole town. The goal is to change awareness and production habits in the direction of organic production chains and e-commerce.

Dong Trieu Town Farmers' Union has organized 8 conferences for 800 members and farmers to disseminate Central and Quang Ninh province’s regulations and policies on encouraging the development of organic agriculture associated with production and agro-product consumption linkage.

The Farmers' Union has deployed members and farmers to participate in models growing high-quality guava, custard apple and rice following VietGAP. Some prime examples include high-efficiency traditional custard apple to Taiwanese custard apple conversion model (5 ha acreage) and VietGAP standard soft custard apple growing model in Binh Khe commune (45 ha acreage).

Nguyen Van Thin believed that the development of clean and safe agriculture was an inevitable trend. In the coming period the Town Farmers' Union will continue to develop and organize concentrated production linkage models in the direction of clean agriculture, organic agriculture as well as science and technology application agroproduction, contributing to realizing the town’s goal of restructuring the agricultural sector.

Dong Trieu Town Farmers' Union also continues to provide consults on the construction and formation of concentrated production areas to form large raw material areas that meet investors ‘ demands; regularly opens training courses, instructs farmers on organic production procedures, VietGAP, GlobalGAP and application of environmentally friendly probiotics. From there the clean, safe and quality agriculture mindset will sprout within every people in the town.