Well-cared trees bear fruitful branches

When visiting the sweet orange garden of Le Thanh Dinh (born in 1975) in Thong village, Tru Huu commune, I was surprised at the large-scaled professional investment and overwhelmed by the fruitful orange trees.

With 250 pomelo trees of different varieties, Nguyen Van Dung’s family (on the left) earns 500 million VND (20,654 USD) each year.

Previously, he spent almost 17,600 square metre of land area for growing lychee and building pig farm system. However, due to the fluctuating market, his family has gradually changed farming model since 2009 from lychee into pomelo while the pig farming area has been improved to raise chicken.

Until 2019, since he saw low profits from pomelo, he made big investment to transplant 350 sweet orange trees into existing pomelo trees. He continued to transplant sweet orange into other 400 pomelo trees in the following year. 

In order to make the plants grow well, apart from organic fertilizers, he used chicken poop to fertilize the plants. Besides, he hired orange cultivation “experts” in the district to consult caring and branching techniques for the trees to bear fruit and ripe at the right time ahead Lunar New Year.

This year, 350 trees transplanted in 2019 start to bear fruits at an expected output of about 40 to 50 tonnes. At the same prices as last year (30,000 to 40,000 VND (1.2 to 1.6 USD) per kilo), his family expects to earn about 1.5 billion VND (62,000 USD).

In order to level up the production, Dinh and other 12 farmers in the commune cooperated to establish Thanh Dinh Agricultural production and consumption Cooperative in October 2021 while registering for evaluating and rating OCOP product in the 2nd period this year.

According to the statistics by the Agricultural and Rural Development Division of Luc Ngan district, the district currently has about 5,100 hectares of citrus trees (a decrease of 1,640 hectares against 2021) with an estimated output of more than 52,300 tonnes. Particularly, the orange growing area is nearly 2,300 hectares yielding an output of 28,700 tonnes and the remaining area is for pomelo growing.

Thanks to caring techniques and business acumen, several farmers gain high income from this plant. In Thanh Hai commune, the citrus orchard of the district with nearly 800 hectares for growing orange and pomelo, farmers earn about 120 billion VND (4.96 million USD) each year, in which more than 10 households earn an income from 500 million VND (20,654 USD) per year.

Keeping stable growing area and gradually improving product quality

Although citrus trees have been grown in the land of Luc Ngan for over 20 years, their values have been affirmed recently. Orange and pomelo bring an annual total value from 1.7 to 2.2 trillion VND (70.2 to 90.9 million USD) for local people.

As citrus trees are hard to grow and care which easily to get diseases, farmers need to have good caring techniques, select proper seedlings and qualified fertilizers and pesticides to maintain stable incomes.

In order to keep stable citrus tree growing area at about 5,700 hectares including 3,000 hectares of cultivation under VietGAP standards aiming to build Luc Ngan district into a national major fruit orchard in the period from 2021 to 2025, the people’s committee of Luc Ngan district is planning to decrease the orange growing area in the low-land regions with low efficiency to increase pomelo growing area in the communes such as Kien Lao, Quy Son, Kien Thanh, Thanh Hai, Nam Duong and Tru Huu.

Besides, the district supports the households to link with each other to establish cooperatives and cooperative groups. Specially, this year the district will resume the fair for orange, pomelo and signature products after one year being disrupted by Covid-19 epidemic. This is a good opportunity for farmers to bring orange and pomelo go farther and improve the produce value.

“Our objectives are not to have more orange and pomelo gardens but we aim to have more gardens gaining billion VND each year.

In order to achieve this target, in line with providing technical guidance to farmers, we will boost investment promotion and marketing the products to more markets. However, to get orange and pomelo gardens bringing billion VND, farmers need to change into organic production following VietGAP standards as well as applying technology to diversify crops and paying attention to harvesting on Lunar New Year occasion”, said Nguyen The Thi, Vice Chairman of the people’s committee of Luc Ngan district.

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