Exploring new land

Arriving at Tran Ket Luan’s grapefruit garden in Chanh Hung hamlet, Luan said that his family has a tradition of growing citrus trees and the kind of this trees helps him enjoy a stabile life. Luan has learnt about techniques of planting citrus trees and determined to apply VietGap standards for his 2ha citrus orchard.

Meanwhile, orange and mandarin gardens of Mr. Lam Thanh Tham (Ba Tham), the owner of immense citrus farm with a large scale in Binh Duong province, are going to harvest. At present, Tham has launched a plan on growing nearly 150ha of citrus trees.

Paying a visit to king of orange tree in Hieu Liem land, we were surprised by immense orange and mandarin farms.

In mid 2007, from the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap, Mr. Ba Tham and his friends started growing durian, orange and papaya. At that time, they managed to seek out water source for their orchards amid hot weather causing shortage of water.

Scientific application into agriculture

4 years later, Ba Tham's orange farm gave an income of about VND450-500mil per ha. With 30 years of experience in planting citrus trees, Ba Tham decided to use nylon sheets to cover orange trees in a bid to control watering, fertilizer and pesticide. As a result, in the first year of applying the new technology, Ba Tham's orange trees developed well and gave many fruits with a very special sweet taste.

Ba Tham's oranges grown in Hieu Liem land have not only appeared across supermarkets, wholesale markets in Binh Duong, HCMC but penetrated into fruit markets in Tien Giag, Ben Tre, Da Nang, etc.

At present, Ba Tham's orchards have included 150 ha of orange and sweet mandarin trees. His products have always given high prices. He has presently equipped automatic facilities for production. In order to increase value of orange, he has applied VietGap standards into his farms.

Meanwhile, Phuong Uyen grapefruit farm has become a strong trademark and appeared across nations and become the farm planting grapefruit in according to VietGap standard for two years.

Le Van Xe, the owner of Phuong Uyen grapefruit farm, said "to produce on VietGap standard, it requires many rigid-but-necessary regulations. At present, many farmers want to develop their orchards on VietGap standard and this requires attention from leaders at all levels. Firstly, we only need assistance to complete procedures for setting up a society for citrus trees. Other jobs like output, technique we ourselves will manage".

Hieu Liem commune People's Committee chairman Nguyen Thanh Lam said that at present citrus trees have given a high value, so the communal party committee has encouraged to develop this kind of tree. Aside from 7ha of green skin grapefruit plantation at Phuong Uyen farm, the locality has applied VietGap standard on 30ha and will expand the application across the entire commune.

Reported by C.Thanh, H.Nhan - Translated by A.C