Creation of specialties from agricultural residues

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The founder of this cooperation group is Mr. Co Thanh Dung, an agricultural engineer who loves clean agriculture, chooses a start-up and enrichment path on his homeland by exploiting the unique advantages of this countryside.

Environmentally friendly products

Vinh Cuu district in particular and Dong Nai in general have thousands of hectares of pomelos. At each pomelo flowering, fruiting, pomelo farmers often take a lot of labor to prune flowers and remove tons of young pomelo. Therefore, the creative agricultural engineer Co Thanh Dung has explored and researched to produce many high-value, eco-friendly products from this wasted material.

After completing the curriculum, Mr. Dung chose to return to his homeland to work. In addition to self-production on his family's land, Mr. Dung has 11 years of working as a commune agriculture officer and has two terms as Chairman of the Farmers Association of Binh Hoa Commune (Vinh Cuu District). Witnessing each pomelo crop, farmers have to prune and transport and discard tons of young pomelo that is both wasteful and polluting the environment, Dung researched himself to turn these agricultural residues into useful products for human consumption. Mr. Dung said: “My initial idea was to use pomelo peel to distill pomelo essential oil. But looking at the pomelo and always thinking of what products I can make, I've developed a lot of ideas about product lines that serve people and are environmentally friendly.”

The list of products from pomelo peel material processed by Mr. Dung is getting longer and longer. In addition to the line of jam, pomelo peel tea, Mr. Dung is also supplying pomelo essential oil, hair-care pomelo essential oil, dishwashing with pomelo essential oil; germicidal hand sanitizer with pomelo essential oil, toilet deodorant from pomelo essential oil; scented fragrance sachets bag, etc. He is also testing more product lines shampoos, hair conditioners, shower gel with pomelo essential oi, etc.

According to engineer Co Thanh Dung, all waste products in agricultural production are not sources of waste that pollute the environment, but are likely to become products that help increase income for farmers if there is a right solution. Pomelo oil products and products made from pomelo oil and environmentally friendly materials are not only well received by domestic consumers, but export opportunities to other countries are huge.

Attracting more farmers to participate

This creative agricultural engineer also successfully tested many clean production models such as growing vegetables according to organic standards, raising mon-che chicken specialties... Currently, Mr. Dung is focusing on developing a model of raising clean mon-che chicken and is well received by the market. He has instructed a number of farmers to turn to organic agriculture towards using self-made microorganisms, organic pesticides, and safe pesticides with human health.

Mr. Dung said, “The product line of jams and tea made from pomelo peel is selected from clean Pomelo gardens to ensure the health of users. My ambition is to link with farmers to build a safe production chain from garden houses to harvest and processing.”

In order to implement the idea of building a chain of clean production and processing links, Mr. Dung has established Minh Duc Transparent Agricultural Production And Business Cooperation Group.  His goal is to link with many farmers to replicate the farming models as well as to process products from environmentally friendly agricultural materials.

By Binh Nguyen

According to Mr. Co Thanh Dung, the product lines processed by Minh Duc Transparent Agricultural Production And Trading Cooperation Group are all natural, environmentally friendly, from processing materials to preservation. For example, pomelo dishwashing liquid is made from the material of the linden fruit as a foaming agent, acid extracted from the citrus peels, pomelo essential oils create fragrances, deodorants, etc., so they can be drunk without affecting human health.