My colleagues and I went to Duc Chinh Township, Cam Giang District, Hai Duong Province on a winter morning, the sun was as yellow as the autumn sun, the field of green carrots was huge and automatically irrigated by sprinklers. We were welcomed by Mr. Nguyen Duc Thuat, Director of the Duc Chinh Agricultural Service Cooperative. As always, I asked him how the price of carrots was this year, advantages and disadvantages in terms of production and consumption. Mr Thuat said this year’s winter crop was unusually warm at the start of harvest (October and November, the high temperature is still above 30 degrees Celsius), so early tea carrots have sharp roots and large cores. Fortunately, December is cold, the quality of later teas will be good. Unfortunately, the price of carrots in Duc Chinh fell by only half compared to the same period last year.

According to Thuat’s assessment and comment, the reason for the fall in carrot prices this year is that Chinese carrots are still exported to him. Workers in the southern industrial zones are unemployed, hence the amount of cabbage and carrots consumed in these areas has decreased. In addition, adverse weather at the beginning of the harvest resulted in ugly, pointed, large seeded carrots, bad shape …

Another obstacle is that Korea has banned the import of tubers and tubers (the edible part that lies on the ground) from October 3, 2022. This is the second time South Korea has issued this ban. The reason is that they found nematodes Radopholus similis in banana tubers (the actual banana body) that are exported to Korea. Since Korea is a market that consumes 80% of the large carrots, the export of Duc Chinh carrots to this market has recently stopped.

What Thuat is most looking forward to is the reopening of the Korean carrot products market. More than 20 Korean companies are waiting to import Duc Chinh carrots. It is known that the Hai Duong Sub-department of Cultivation and Plant Protection reported this matter to the Plant Protection Department, and the department held a dialogue with the Korean side to lift the ban.

I asked Mr. Thuat, “Are you and your relatives satisfied with what the project to support the preliminary processing and preservation of agricultural products in Vietnam brings?” (It is a project funded by the Korean Rural Community, the Korean Ministry of Agriculture , Nutrition and Rural Affairs and received and implemented by the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences).

“Very happy, sister. With a preliminary processing capacity of 100 tons of carrots/day, 3,000 tons/month in 5 months carrot crop/year, 15,000 tons of carrots will be exported from the pre-processing plant funded by the project. After harvesting, carrots need to be washed by 5 water, chilled – 3 degrees Celsius for 16-24 hours, until the core reaches 8 degrees Celsius. But that is the tangible value, the intangible value that the project brings. Since the project started, many Korean companies have come directly here to buy carrots. We negotiate the price directly with them, unlike in the past they buy through intermediaries. and relatives are forced to set the price. Businesses are contacting us directly through Zalo, here I’ll show you…” shared Mr. Thuat.

Thuat pulled out his phone to show me the message. Very happy when a company wrote to Mr. Thuat that carrots could be exported to Korea and they wanted to buy them in January 2023. Mr. Thuat is very happy and excited to share with me the intangibles the project will bring: “More than 20 Korean companies want to buy Duc Chinh’s carrots. Samsung Group will buy Duc Chinh’s carrots from 2021. In the near future, Deputy General Manager of Samsung will visit the cooperative.”

It can be said that this project also promotes other projects to support the concentrated carrot growing area in Duc Chinh municipality. The People’s Committee of Hai Duong Province has also invested in expanding the main road of the carrot field in Duc Chinh Township from 3m to 6m to facilitate the transportation of carrots and invested in an economical irrigation system (spray irrigation). 100 ha of carrots outside the dike, irrigation water is taken from the Thai Binh River.

About product safety: In order to export carrots, farmers need to comply with regulations so that the product meets the buyer’s requirements. In 2020, a company that exported carrots to Japan was turned back over excess hexaconazole residues. People treated dried rotten tubers with milk medicine, active ingredient hexaconazole, and watered the beds (too much use). Hai Duong’s crop protection department has trained farmers to only spray the leaves and not water the soil in case of plant diseases (pouring the medicinal solution into the soil is not only a matter of residues in the product, but also kills microorganisms). down in the soil).

Hai Duong plant protection department also conducts the isolation period of 25-30 days. From there, carrots can only be exported if the quarantine period is at least 25 days and there are no more residue problems. With a carrot area of ​​the entire commune in 2019, it is 360 ha, as of 2021 it is 380 ha, plus about 1,000 ha of land outside the commune that residents lease for growing carrots every year, the average yield is 51 tons /ha, Duc Chinh Municipality’s carrot revenue in 2019 is VND170 billion, rising to VND300 billion in 2022 (actually, the revenue from carrots grown from the 2021 winter crop).

Congratulations to Mr Thuat and carrot farmer Duc Chinh. Compared to 2019, the cooperative believes much more in the future of the carrot. Remember, when I asked about the difficulties of producing and consuming carrots at the time, Thuat said, “People in Duc Chinh can produce carrots exactly as the market requires, but the market is unstable, so he can’t.” not be helped. Depreciation season “. Now it’s different, Thuat believes that with the current expansion of the market and proven products, farmers will still get a good harvest.