Orchards of Yen Bai’s west

  •  Thursday, November 3, 2022

YênBái - If Muong Lo is likened to the area of "white rice with pure water", Nghia Lo commune in Nghia Lo town is dubbed as an orchard area of the west of Yen Bai thanks to its diversity of fruits.

Orchard of Doan Van Yem’s family is safely grown
Orchard of Doan Van Yem’s family is safely grown

Hoang Trung Dung, Vice Chairman of Nghia Lo communal People's Committee said this land used to be desolate, full of reeds, and difficult to cultivate because of dry soil and gravel. However, with only human power, many households here renovated it into an orchard bringing high and stable income. The family of Tran Ba Duc is considered a pioneer.

On an area of 1.5 ha, Duc's garden has 400 red flesh dragon fruit trees, 100 plum trees, 20 hybrid apple trees, 30 mango sapodilla trees and nearly 100 Hoang Kim star apple trees. Each year, Duc's family supplies over 10 tonnes of various fruits to the market, earning more than 400 million USD.

Not far from Duc's house, the garden of Yem's family in village 9 is a 1.8 ha of 20 different varieties of oranges and tangerines like BH, V2, CT36. His family had 6ha of land for afforestation but applied for a conversion of 1.8ha to grow citrus trees since 2010.

Yem said as soon as he started planting, he focused on safe farming without the use of herbicides and pesticides that are replaced by biological fertilisers. Therefore, despite the impacts of yellow leaf and rotten root disease, his orange garden was less affected. Last year, he harvested 20 tonnes of fruits and earned over 300 million VND.

Duc and Yem's families are only two out of nearly 200 households in Nghia Lo commune to grow fruits. Many of them have escaped poverty and become well-off. The whole commune of Nghia Lo has also become an area of various healthy fruit trees like star apple, longan, dragon fruit, apple, guava, orange, plum with a total area of 242 ha. It supplies more than 500 tonnes of various fruits to the market each year. Fruit products in Nghia Lo commune have also become specialties for tourists whenever they travel to western districts and towns of the province.

In order to improve product competitiveness and quality, Nghia Lo urged and instructed farmers to join the One Commune, One Product programme.

Later, Nghia Lo agricultural cooperative was established with 12 members. It quickly brought red flesh dragon fruit and green skin pomelo to the programme. They are in the process of completing procedures for evaluation and classification.

The "star rating” for local signature products will not only raise their profiles but also attract residents, businesses and cooperatives to production, processing and consumption, thus creating a concentrated material area for products./.

Hoai Anh