Few years have been as high as this year

Phu Thi Municipality is one of the places that grow the most bananas and peppers in Gia Lam District, Hanoi (over 50 hectares), of which nearly 30 hectares are harvested during the Lunar New Year. So far, many banana gardens planted here have ordered from traders and bought for VND 270,000-300,000/room (depending on the bad and beautiful bananas).

Gardener Ta Van Kieu in To Khe (Phu Thi) village has 1,000 bananas for harvest at the end of the year and was valued by traders at VND 275,000/room, but Mr. Kieu did not sell them because the price of bananas can still be low be. Mr. Kieu said there are few years when traders buy tet bananas early and pay as high prices as this year.

“At this pace by New Year, bananas are likely to go up to VND 400,000/room (8-10 bundles) and consumers sometimes reach up to VND 100,000/bundle, but don’t play! Because at that time the banana price was high was limited. Retail sales at some rural markets near Hanoi have reached 100,000 VND/bunch of beautiful bananas. Bananas at this price are also worth the trouble of being made using the VietGAP process,” said Mr. Kieu excitedly.

Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh (from To Khe Village) also said that most of the banana-growing households in this area are now “locked in” to sell buckets of the whole garden with traders for VND285,000/room. Mr. Thanh personally planted 1,000 banana trees, only 500 spaces for harvest during Tet. Due to the small quantity, Mr. Thanh did not sell in a hurry. When not selling to traders, he will transfer to Long Bien Agricultural Wholesale Market (Hanoi) and sell immediately.

Enthusiastic about the high banana prices this year, Mr. Thanh said, “Banana cultivation is very leisurely, hard work, one worker can cultivate 3,000 to 5,000 banana roots, and certainly profitable, the problem is a lot of profit or good.” It’s only a small amount. But banana trees often suffer from Panama yellow leaf disease, which is difficult to prevent. To overcome it, it should be planted with tissue culture plants and switched to other plants every 5-7 years.” In the plan until 2023, Mr. Thanh will lease more fields and increase the pink pepper banana area to 2,000 trees (0.5 ha) expand.

Mr. Nguyen Xuan Tu (To Khe Village) planted 1.8 ha of pink pepper bananas. From August to now, he has sold almost 2,000 bananas, and more than 2,000 more rooms have customers who “eat” wholesale for 280,000 VND/room (unclassified), but Mr. Tu has not nodded yet, wants to wait His bananas are more beautiful than other households.

The feat of growing bananas for Tet sale

According to Mr. Tu, for a bunch of bananas to be considered beautiful, it has to reach 8-10 bunches or more. The fruits and fruit clusters must be large, incurved and of a dull green colour, free from blemishes and pests. In order to grow such fruit-bearing banana trees, Mr. Tu and the gardeners here often sow seeds in the 2nd lunar month, fertilize with phosphorus, potassium, compost chicken manure with microbial products for 3 – 5 months, use finely ground soybean seeds and water Waste products are soaked, and then instead fertilized by chemical nitrogen.

Care must be taken that the banana tree is always fat and strong, the leaves are thick, and the neck of the tree is covered with a chalky white layer. Alongside this, it is also necessary to monitor the hydrological weather to see whether the winter of the year is getting warmer or colder, to slow or encourage the growth of trees in order to harvest fruit on the occasion of the Lunar New Year. For example, in 2023 there will be a shift February, gardeners will have to back down for about 1 month.

When asked why he did not use beating techniques for bananas to be harvested around Tet to easily “catch” high prices, Mr. Tu analyzed: pink pepper bananas from planting to harvesting about 10 months, accordingly, bananas become in February planted fruit in December of the lunar calendar.

To reduce investment in seedlings, fertilizer, and labor, second-year gardeners choose to take a healthy seedling that comes from the mother’s root from May to August, and then tend to the fruit. These biennial banana gardens, used primarily for year-round fruit gathering, rarely coincide with Tet. Also, Tet bananas don’t have the same price every year as this year. In addition, the high price of bananas during Tet also means high production costs, as analyzed above.

Hoang Thi Thuy Nga, deputy chief of economic department of Gia Lam district, said that this district has nearly 400 hectares of pink pepper bananas, mainly growing in the coastal areas of Duong River in Phu Dong, Dang Xa, Phu Thi, Kim Son and Phu Dong are cultivated communities. In which 50% of the area is harvested on the occasion of the Lunar New Year.

So far, virtually all producers have had traders come to deposit bananas of all kinds, and the selling price is also 50-60% higher than the same period last year. “Bananas are valued because our country no longer has to maintain social distancing because of Covid-19. And exporting agricultural products to China, including bananas and all kinds of fruits, is also much cheaper than last year,” Nga added.