Betel gardens are located one after another along the road in Hamlet 5, Vi Thuy Commune, Vi Thuy District. People here started growing betel more than 50 years ago, on a small scale. At that time, betel leaves were only used as wedding gifts in the village.
Over the years, people of Vi Thuy commune have focused on maintaining and developing betel cultivation locally, considering it one of the traditional and typical agricultural occupations.
The number of villagers participating in the profession is increasing day by day, so the area of ​​betel cultivation is also increasing exponentially.
Betel gardens in Vi Thuy are usually several hundred to several thousand square meters wide, on a household production scale.
According to local people, the reason why betel is grown a lot in Vi Thuy is because the soil conditions are quite suitable for its growth and development characteristics.
Betel is a climbing plant, which is cared for and the vines are wrapped around the poles, and planted in neat, beautiful rows. The betel poles are about 2 meters high and are usually made of wood. When harvesting, workers often use wooden ladders to climb up to pick the leaves.
Betel vines have the characteristics of fast growth, easy to grow, especially only like organic fertilizers, straw, manure... Well-cared leaves have an eye-catching golden green color, with a natural spicy taste. On average, each 1,000m2 of land can grow about 1,000 betel stems. When the betel leaves are big enough, people will harvest 3 times/month at a price of about 8,000 VND/green betel leaf; 6-7,000 VND/yellow betel leaf (each betel leaf has 40 betel leaves), total income is about 100 million VND/household/year.
Betel growing in Vi Thuy attracts many local workers, helping to solve employment and increase income for the people. Normally, each betel garden will have 3-5 people working regularly. Their main jobs are watering, fertilizing, pruning branches, weeding and harvesting, with wages of about 150,000 VND/person/day.
The green betel gardens of today were formerly mixed gardens or rice fields. The conversion of crop varieties is a big turning point for local people to increase their income and improve their lives.
Hau Giang province is implementing a project to develop the betel growing craft village of Vi Thuy commune associated with tourism development, considering this a unique and rare type of production in the West.
Vi Thuy betel leaves have become a familiar brand, purchased and distributed by many traders in provinces and cities across the country.
This is an indispensable product in the wedding tray, a traditional cultural feature of the Vietnamese people. Hoang Giam - Ly Anh Lam