Missing the scent of Hung Thinh oranges

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By the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, the whole commune had 207.07 hectares of fruit trees, of which the business area was 94 hectares, the basic construction area was 91.07 hectares, and the care area was 22 hectares. The citrus fruit growing movement became more developed when Tran Yen district issued a specialized resolution on the fruit tree planting program.

Along with that, there is the planning and development of concentrated production areas, encouraging the conversion of ineffective crops to fruit trees with many incentive and support mechanisms and policies, from techniques to varieties, capital, and fertilizers. It was thought that the Hung Thinh orange brand would flourish, the commune had a cooperative group that both planted and provided technical guidance and advice to the people. On average, each year, the income from fruit trees of the people in the commune reached over 20 billion VND.

Thanks to fruit trees, hundreds of households in the commune have a comfortable life, many households with large orange gardens have built spacious houses and bought cars worth billions of dong. In the golden season, late autumn, early winter, oranges and tangerines ripen on the hillsides; motorbikes and cars come to collect them, along the national highway, people display them for sale, tourists stop to buy and sell busily; especially, when the weather turns to spring, the scent of oranges, grapefruits, and lemons fills the whole countryside...

Unfortunately, those images have faded into the past. After around 2020, many orange gardens in Hung Thinh that were lush suddenly lost their leaves, withered their fruits and gradually died. The situation of oranges getting sick and dying became common and widespread throughout Yen Binh and Yen Dinh villages... Orange growers were heartbroken, focused on taking care of their trees, fertilizing them with manure, chemical fertilizers, spraying pesticides, disease control..., looking for a cure; going to Van Chan orange areas such as: Tran Phu Farm town, Thuong Bang La, Nghia Tam... to ask, some even traveled all the way to Cao Phong, Hoa Binh to learn... Unfortunately, the results were still just a general statement: "Yellow leaf disease, root rot, unknown cause, no way to fix".

The Hung Thinh fruit growing area is gradually fading away. Among them, varieties such as Canh orange, Sanh orange, Sen orange, Duong Canh orange are almost wiped out. The large orange gardens of the past now have only a few trees left. People are no longer interested in taking care of them, fertilizing, weeding, spraying pesticides; only lemons and grapefruits with green-skinned varieties, Dien, Dai Minh, Doan Hung... are still green and flourishing. However, the selling price is not high, because the area is too large, the output is high, the supply exceeds the demand, so they cannot sell at a good price or cannot be sold at all, so many households do not harvest, letting the big and small fruits ripen and fall around the base, rolling from the hillside to the foot of the hill.

Mr. Pham Van Thuy in Yen Binh village is a hard-working farmer and was one of the first people to have an orange garden of up to a hectare in 2013 and 2014. After the basic construction cycle, the orange garden had just been harvested when yellow leaves and root rot struck. Tree after tree died slowly. Like many people in the village and commune, he ran around everywhere to learn; brought sick trees to scientists from major research institutes; drew on all the experiences of those who went before and applied all the methods, but the terrible disease was still not stopped.

He lamented: "If we could save them, people wouldn't be suffering like this; it took a lot of effort and money, not just a little." Having said that, Mr. Thuy took me to visit the garden, which used to be a lush orange garden, selling to many customers, welcoming many tourists... now replaced by cinnamon, apples and persimmons, with a few seasonal lemon trees remaining but only cared for carelessly because last year's selling price was only 12,000 VND/kg.

I miss the scent of Hung Thinh oranges so much! I exclaimed as if to share with Mr. Thuy and the people of Hung Thinh. Is it possible that our people have followed the trend, seeing it and planting it en masse? Is it possible that people have overused fertilizers, especially chemical fertilizers and manure, but have not composted them or processed them properly? All of this is just speculation because many localities have invited experts and scientists to their orange gardens to focus on research, but all the conclusions are either unclear or specific, still just yellow leaves, rotten roots, all the advice, or instructions on different ways to prevent and control them, but all have not been effective.

Le Phien

Source: https://baoyenbai.com.vn/12/349266/Thuong-nho-huong-cam-Hung-Thinh.aspx