For this year’s crop, pepper prices are still lower than its production costs even though yields are lower than in previous years. This is the third year in a row, farmers continuously face difficulties because pepper prices are always much lower than its production costs. It can be said that the current time is the most difficult time for pepper farmers because it has both poor crops and low prices.
Many pepper growing areas are being shifted towards safe production. Especially in specialized farming areas, farmers link production in chains from planting to consuming and processing so that this crop can develop sustainably.
Poor crops, Low prices
At the beginning of the crop, there was irregular rain, so the trees produced fruits many times with lower yield, but the harvest time lasted much longer than every year. Farmers got bad crops, and price of pepper sold on-site did not exceed VND 50,000/kg, lower than its production cost, which made farmers continue to face a difficult harvest. Currently, the labor cost for harvesting pepper is from VND 230,000-250,000 per day; Some growers choose to hire labor to harvest in the form of sharing 50% - 60% of the total output of pepper to be harvested each day. Labor costs are too high while pepper prices are low, making it more difficult because of capital losses.
According to Mr. Phan Kiem, a farmer of Lam San commune (Cam My District): “Low pepper prices while high labor costs and difficulty of finding workers, so many low-yield growers have to neglect to harvest because harvesting is a loss of labor costs. Some pepper growers choose to buy nets and spread them in the garden to catch falling pepper or prolong the harvest time. However, with an investment of VND 40-50 million to buy net per ha of pepper, not all farmers can afford to choose this solution”.
Huynh Tan Thin, Chairman of Cam My District People’s Committee, currently leading the area of pepper trees in the province, said demolishing or replanting a pepper garden is not easy. Our district currently has no plan to expand the area of pepper cultivation in the context of low pepper prices and many diseases, which causing a lot of pepper garden to die; but we have a plan towards stability, supporting farmers to take care of and keep the existing pepper area stable. We have the strength of being pepper farmers for many years, a lot of experience and techniques to take care of plants. For us, the solution to stabilize people’s lives in the current period is to focus on care technology to reduce costs, increase productivity and quality to have higher profits.
Keeping the pepper area
In previous years, the value of pepper was high, so there was a time when the pepper area in the province increased to 17-18 thousand hectares. In the past 3 years, pepper prices have been continuously below production costs, so farmers have changed their pepper and converted to other crops, causing the area of pepper to decrease by thousands of hectares.
According to Vice Chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee Vo Van Phi, with over 12 thousand hectares being the crop occupying a quite large area in Dong Nai, it can be said that pepper is still the main crop of the province. Currently, Dong Nai does not encourage the development of more pepper acreage, but will focus on implementing groups of solutions to enhance the value of this crop through improving productivity, quality, meeting the requirements and standards for exporting to markets for farmers to stabilize their production.
Trying to overcome difficulties, Lam San Cooperative, which invests in large fields for pepper projects in Lam San commune (Cam My district), has many solutions to increase the value of pepper. Director Nguyen Ngoc Luan shared that recently, it invested in a pepper peeling and drying machine system that provides a cost-effective solution without causing environmental pollution, making white pepper that meets the standards of export to Europe. Residue from this preliminary process is also used in animal husbandry and is also exported well, thus contributing to increasing the value of pepper for export. “In order for the project to be truly effective for the sustainable development of pepper, pepper farmers and cooperatives are looking forward to the fastest access to supportive policies for the large field project” - Mr. Luan suggested.
Talking about solutions for sustainable development of pepper, Mr. Huynh Tan Thin added that Cam My District will continue to effectively implement programs and policies to support the large pepper field project implemented by Lam San Cooperative such as: support for plant protection, materials for economical irrigation systems, support for farming techniques, analysis of soil and water samples, etc. The results show that over the past time, the total local funding to support this project for Lam San Cooperative is about VND 17.3 billion. In this second quarter, this district continues to speed up the support of the remaining funds for farmers as planned. In the processing investment, the communes and districts have a plan to support the cooperative to invest in warehouse, preliminary processing and processing areas. In addition, this district also expects provincial leaders and experts to help find more solutions to select intercropping crops in pepper gardens to increase the efficiency of arable land.
Phan Anh
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