2023-07-12 05:00:00
At the end of the plum harvest season for nearly a week now, members of Tien Dat cooperative in Yen Thi village, Long Phieng commune (Yen Chau, Son La), returned to the work of pruning and pruning, preparing for a new plum season. .
One touch breaks the fog
Mr. Tran Van Hong, Director of Tien Dat Cooperative, said that the whole cooperative has 8 members, with a plum growing area of about 30ha. Compared to other cooperatives in Yen Chau, the plum area in Tien Dai Cooperative is not large, but in the past few years, every year has been a good crop. People’s income is stable, households grow many billions of money each year. Plums also become a rich tree in this high place.
“The secret to being like that is that farmers can change the sky to ‘make it rain’ anytime they want with a smartphone,” he revealed.
According to Mr. Hong, in Long Phieng commune, plum plum is a traditional crop. However, farmers who planted plum many years ago often suffered the loss of crops because of frost.
Automatic sprinkler system helps to break the salt mist in Tien Dat cooperative.
Because in this high mountain area, every year from November to January of the following year, hoarfrost often appears. The more plum orchards planted on flat land, the more severely affected by frost.
“The dew only appears for a few hours in the early morning and then melts. But that is enough to make the young plums burn and rot. The flowers and plum leaves can’t stand if the frost is too thick.” he said.
The hoarfrost usually appears at 3-4 o’clock in the morning. Winter weather is cold, no one can get up at that time to water the dew (watering to wash away the frost). Therefore, farmers can only wait for the rain to save the plum garden.
Three or four years ago, members of the cooperative watched a number of high-tech agricultural programs online. Everyone who sees the automatic watering model should learn to follow.
Accordingly, households with a well-off economy invest in an automatic sprinkler system for their entire plum area. Households with little capital do it gradually, no matter where the money comes, do it.
The water source is taken from wells dug on the hill. The water pipe is squeezed onto the trunk, the spray head is arranged to suit each plum tree canopy. This irrigation system is controlled via an app on a smartphone.
The investment and installation cost of this system for 1 ha is up to 50-70 million VND, which can be used continuously for 10 years. In return, a farmer like him can sit anywhere by phone and order watering the whole garden several hectares wide.
Tien Dat Cooperative members livestream selling plums after.
“Having this automatic sprinkler system is relaxing. In the cold winter, lying in a warm blanket, farmers can also control the sprinkler system to destroy the salt mist on plum trees. The system works no different from heaven. It’s pouring rain,” he boasted.
Up to now, 90% of the cooperative’s plum area has been installed with this automatic sprinkler system. It is expected that this year will proceed to 100% installation.
Plums are on the ‘floor’, farmers livestream selling goods everywhere
At Tien Dat Cooperative, not only is he equipped with an automatic sprinkler system to break the frost, he also applies VietGAP standard planting, organic fertilizer, pruning branches to create a ventilation canopy. So, at the beginning of the season, his family’s 4ha plums collected 20 tons of early ripe plums, selling prices from 70,000-100,000 VND/kg, revenue reaching 1.5 billion VND. That does not include the amount of plums in the main season.
Mr. Ha Duc Thuong, a member of Tien Dat cooperative also chose to improve the quality by taking care of and trimming branches and fruits on the tree to concentrate nutrients for the remaining fruits to grow large, beautiful, and beautiful. post-Ruby plum standards.
Harvested plums are classified to put on e-commerce floors, markets and supermarkets for consumption (Photo: NVCC)
This is a large-sized plum, ranging from 18-20 fruits/kg, the skin is purple-red, sweet taste. In the past 2-3 years, this plum has been popular in the market, the price is 2-3 times higher than normal plum, he shared.
According to Mr. Hong, the cooperative’s plums currently produce two crops a year. In particular, off-season plums (early plums) are harvested from the full moon of January to the beginning of April of the lunar calendar. Although the output of off-season plums is not as high as in the main season, the selling price in the garden is up to 90,000-120,000 VND/kg depending on the time.
“The automatic sprinkler system that breaks the frost also helps the early plum crop to have better yield and quality,” he said.
After finishing plums early, farmers will switch to harvesting plums in the main season. Because, off-season plums produce fruit from the trunk (old branches), while main-season plums come from young branches at the top, in the same garden, it is possible to collect both off-season plums and main-season plums.
The selling price of plums in the main season depends on the type and time. With post-Vip plums costing 70,000-80,000 VND/kg, the proportion of plums of this type only accounts for 10-15% of the output. As for plum buckets from 15,000-20,000 VND/kg, sometimes the price is only 7,000 VND/kg.
The output of plums of the cooperative this year is about 600 tons, the revenue is estimated at tens of billion dong. In which, households that grow less will earn a few hundred million, households that grow a lot will earn billions.
Sharing about the consumption market, Mr. Hong said that last year about 35% of the cooperative’s plum production was consumed on the e-commerce floor, the rest was supplied to markets and supermarkets… This year, the amount of plums was peppered. Sales on the floor decreased, but the members livestreamed sales everywhere, so the output was relatively stable.
In the coming time, the cooperative will continue to invest and research to spread the crop in the harvest, and at the same time improve the quality and design of products, he said.
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