Hanoi farmers reap reward of higher-quality flowers
High-quality flower farming has helped farmers in Hanoi’s suburban districts become more prosperous in recent years, said the municipal Agriculture and Rural Development Department Director Chu Phu My.
 |
The high-quality flowers helped growers earn profits up to ten times higher than from normal flowers, he said.
Nguyen Van Suot, a gardener in Tay Tuu commune, Bac Tu Liem district, said his family earned more than US$2,200 yearly from 1,000sq.m of lilies.
He hired ten people to work on his farm, paying each about US$135 monthly, he said.
Vice Chairman of the Tay Tuu communal People’s Committee Bui Trung Hoa said that flowers helped local farmers earn on average US$24,700 per hectare, much more than rice cultivation.
Nguyen The Do Cuong, a gardener in Huong Ngai commune, Thach That district said that he earned billions of Vietnamese dong each year from forest orchids.
With assistance from the Hanoi Agriculture Promotion Centre, Cuong raised hundreds of orchids which were grown around the year, generating a stable income for his family, he said.
However, the agriculture official My said that most flower growers sold to wholesalers with unstable prices and volumes.
“The city’s agriculture sector wants to boost cooperation with other localities to set up a stable supply-consumption chain for flowers,” he said, adding that better links between farmers and firms are needed.
Vice Director of the Hanoi Agriculture Promotion Centre Vu Thi Huong told the Nong thon ngay nay ( Countryside Today) newspaper that flower growing in Hanoi had been a popular industry since the 1980s.
The area for flowers and ornamental plants in the city in 2014 was about 2,650ha, more than four times higher than in 2005.
In 1995, each hectare of flower/ornamental plants generated US$3,900 per year but in 2014, this increased to US$16,000 per hectare per year.
Huong said that few flower-growing zones in the city applied modern farming and processing technology, which reduced flower quality, adding the city did not have a good supply of high quality seedlings.
She noted that most flowers were grown with traditional techniques which were cheap, easy to apply but low quality and vulnerable to cacogenesis.-
