Bumper crop of Tet pomeloes – Low price sold by farmers

Good harvest of pomeloes and their fallen price

Mr. and Mrs. Kim are next to the fruitful pomelo garden

3,000-square metre pomelo garden  of Ms. Huynh Thi Anh Dao’s family on this Tet holiday is very fruitful. The pomeloes are big, heavy and good-looking owing to the convenient weather; moreover, the owners also made their efforts to take care of them so that the Tet pomeloes would have good quality and be sold with high price. God bless people, and their hardworking time’s result was that she had a good harvest of pomeloes. No sooner had she been happy than the Tet pomelo’s price fell quickly. She said that each year her pomelo garden brings VND 60-70 million / km² in which Tet pomeloes get VND 40 million. In previous years although there were not good harvest of pomeloes, they got high price so the farmers got high benefit. Businessmen rushed into the gardens to book in advance with the average price from VND 200,000-300,000 per dozen. Pomeloes this year are VND 150,000-170,000 per dozen for the first type while businessmen drive a hard bargain and it’s not as convenient to sell pomeloes as previous years.

                   Despite good harvest of pomeloes, farmers can’t get as high benefit as in bad one because of low price. Ms. Dao pointed to neighboring garden and said, “ Farmers are anxiously waited for rising price on coming days. If the situation is not good, it is better to sell pomeloes soon because they will be dry, which is impossible to sell. It is essential that the bigger garden farmers have, the sooner they sell pomeloes.”

                   Ms. Le Thi Kim’s family, the owner of the 5 km² neighboring garden, has a bumper crop this year with about 12,000 pomeloes due to her retired husband who made great efforts to take care of the garden using scientific methods in order to get high productivity. Her first type pomeloes get 70% of the total. However, she is not glad. Last month the couple decided to sell the whole with the price of VND 135 million. Although she has felt regretful, it has been known that the economy is forecasted to be hard; therefore, it is impossible to have as extremely high pomelo price as that of last year. To avoid risks her family decided to sell the whole to merchants. Labour, fertilizers and capital get almost half of the proceeds. Despite bumper crop, the profit completely decreases in comparison with last year.

                   Businesspeople waiting for customers.

                   Not only do farmers face fallen price anxiousness but businesspeople are gloomy as well. Although pomeloes this year are nicer and cheaper than those of  previous years, market trade is much worse. Ms. Nguyen Thi Lieu, who has 8-year experience in purchasing pomeloes in Bien Hoa market complained that this year pomelo sale is very awful. Normally on these days there are not enough pomeloes to sell, and she must buy a lot more from gardens. Meanwhile, there are so many pomeloes left at present though she did not take as many as last year. There have been a few customers who mainly buy pomeloes for Tet decoration. Amount of customers who buy with large quantity from dozens or more in order to present get 50% of that of last year. Customers are not eager to buy the fruits so they just come to know price and leave.

A salesperson is waiting for customers

                   Pomelo is a type of fresh fruit and cannot be stored long, therefore, salespeople are shy of buying so many. Pomelo price fall by over 100,000 dong per dozen in comparison with that of last year. Salespeople are waiting for customers while there are a lot of pomeloes left.

Reported by N.Thuong, Translated by Ms. Flower