From coincidence to the “leader” who brings passion fruit abroad

We happened to meet Ms. Do Thi My Thom, Director of Hung Thom Gia Lai Agriculture and Services Cooperative (Hung Thom Gia Lai Cooperative, Nhon Tan Village, Dak Ta Ley Township, Mang Yang District) when the Cooperative participated in the exhibition at Trade Promotion Fair in the provinces of Central and Central Highlands took place in November 2022. Although the stand is not big, it impresses many customers with unique passion fruit products such as: Frozen passion fruit pulp, passion fruit juice, flexible dried passion fruit, passion fruit powder, detox tea Crispy dried passion fruit, passion fruit oil…

The story of Ms. Thom’s connection with cultivating passion fruit for export to many countries around the world is so famous not only among the people of Mang Yang District but also of Gia Lai Province. Ms. Thom is proud to have recently been honored as one of 100 farmers and awarded the title of “Excellent Vietnamese Farmer in 2022”. Particularly in 2021, Ms. Thom was awarded the Certificate of Merit from the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development for her outstanding achievements in the implementation of the One Commune One Product (OCOP) program over the period 2018-2020.

To thrive today, Ms. Thom also went through an arduous start-up process and bravely quit her job as a dressmaker with a stable salary to stay with Maracuja.

Ms. Thom said her family came from farmers, her parents used to be attached to coffee and pepper plants, but the profitability was not high due to lack of production experience, little capital, and pepper plants got sick, die quickly, die slowly. Incidentally, in 2007 she was introduced by an acquaintance in Lam Dong to grow passion fruit trees in Gia Lai, which are very suitable for the soil.

The idea came up, she quickly went online to learn the technique of planting and caring for passion fruit trees. She then went to Lam Dong to buy passion fruit for trial cultivation on the family’s 4 hectares of land. Realizing the economic potential of this crop, she expanded the area to 2 hectares interspersed with coffee and pepper trees.

Through the experimental planting stages to explore, she solved the problem when she successfully brought passion fruit to the land of Gia Lai. Mrs. Thom, however, had difficulties in the consumer market when this fruit was quite new, and when it was planted no traders came to buy it.

To consume passion fruit, she had to go everywhere, to big cities in the countryside to sell it. In 2011, Ms. Thom was lucky to find a stable purchase of passion fruit at Thu Duc Market (HCMC) at VND 15,000/kg. After that, she continued to work with an import-export company to export passion fruit to European countries.

The consumption market was initially broken up, Ms. Thom boldly expanded the cultivation area of ​​more than 3 hectares of passion fruit, and at the same time collaborated in the production and consumption of products for local passion fruit-growing households.

In 2018, in order to achieve stable production, it established the Hung Thom Gia Lai Agricultural and Service Cooperative with 38 members and invested in procurement of equipment and processing factories.

After establishing a cooperative and building a large commodity area, Ms. Thom strengthened herself to participate in trade promotion channels, to target foreign customers, to target export markets and improve product value. Fortunately, at that time, many foreign customers visited the cooperative’s passion fruit products and appreciated them very much, so they decided to cooperate in consuming the products.

“As a farmer, I want to produce the best quality passion fruit so that I have an impression of my product when I come into contact with customers. From there, customers will import the cooperative’s passion fruit products and take them to other countries for consumption, that’s their biggest wish,” said Ms. Thom.

According to Ms. Thom, the cooperative currently exports on average more than 2 tons of passion fruit every week to markets such as France, Russia, Switzerland, China… At a current export price of about 60,000 VND/kg. Every year, the cooperative generates a profit of more than VND 1.5 billion after expenses have been deducted.

“Win together” with relatives

Currently, Hung Thom Gia Lai cooperative is connected to more than 150 households in Mang Yang, Dak Po, Kbang, Chu Prong districts… and produces more than 300 hectares of passion fruit. Of these, around 80 hectares of passion fruit meet GlobalGAP standards. In addition, the cooperative has worked with fertilizer and plant variety companies to train members on passion fruit tree cultivation techniques and appropriate fertilization, and is committed to ensuring stable and sustainable development of passion fruit trees by controlling disease risks in the production process. At present, each hectare of passion fruit has a yield of 45-60 tons, with a selling price of 18-40 thousand VND/kg, after deducting expenses, the associated households have a profit of 500-600 million VND.

As the first household farmer to bravely and trustingly participate in the cooperative association for cultivation of passion fruit, Mr. Hoang Long Quan (Kon Duong City, Mang Yang District) said that from 2019, after being provided with seeds, technical care instructions, the passion fruit tree the family is growing very well. In addition, the lemon garden is consumed by the cooperative at a high cost, improving the family’s economy.

“The family now has 2,000 passion fruit roots and generates an annual profit of about 300 million Dong. To achieve this, his family must strictly follow the passion fruit care program prescribed by the cooperative, using mainly manure for organic production. Therefore, passion fruit is always bought by the cooperative at a very high price,” Mr. Long said.

Ms. Thom understands people’s desire and desire to grow and consume products in a sustainable way and has developed the idea of ​​manufacturing and branding products processed from passion fruit in order to gradually increase the price of value products for people, claim around the international market to reach.

Accordingly, the cooperative has now established 7 passion fruit tree primaries covering an area of ​​126.4 ha. Currently, the cooperative has many products with 3 to 4 star OCOP certification, such as:

“In order to increase product value and develop sustainably, the cooperative continues to expand national and international e-commerce sales channels, register for ISO 22000: 2018 certification, digital transformation in management, transparent information from agricultural origin to import – and export packaging, as, as well as consumer feedback,” shared Ms. Thom.

Mr. Vo Minh Quang, Chief of Agriculture and Rural Development Department of Mang Yang District, said that Ms. Thom is the pioneer of Mang Yang District in exporting passion fruit to countries such as France, Switzerland, Russia… Supporting the passion fruit of the Landes Gia Lai has confirmed its value in the international market.

“To achieve this result, Ms. Thom has formed an association with many households to develop a large growing area of ​​high quality passion fruit that meets strict export standards. The households participating in the association are supported by the cooperative with seeds, fertilizers, carefully cultivated and consumed products with higher prices than the market. This helps connected households earn incomes of up to billion Dong. In addition, Ms. Thom’s cooperative also creates jobs for more than 70 workers, helping local people gradually lift themselves out of poverty,” said Mr. Quang.