Finding solutions for sustainable development of dragon fruit industry

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Binh Thuan province has just had a working session with the Southern Agency - Central Vietnam Gardening Association on coordinating the organization of the Forum "Finding solutions for sustainable development of Vietnam's dragon fruit industry".

Mr. Phan Van Tan - Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Binh Thuan chaired the meeting. Also attending were leaders of the Gardening Association, the Vietnam Fruit and Vegetable Association and leaders of some departments and branches of the province, the Binh Thuan Dragon Fruit Association...

*Leaders of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development spoke at the meeting.*

Accordingly, to organize the forum well in Binh Thuan province in the coming time, the delegates attending the meeting focused on discussing comprehensive solutions for developing Vietnamese dragon fruit; viewpoints and awareness from producers, cooperatives, businesses, and dragon fruit exporters; strategies and plans for sustainable dragon fruit development. At the same time, they emphasized the benefits of people when growing dragon fruit, the role of state agencies; propaganda work, building dragon fruit brands at home and abroad...

*Ham Thuan Bac farmers harvest dragon fruit in the season.*

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development said that up to now, the whole province has 26,429 hectares of dragon fruit, a decrease of 1,359 hectares compared to the end of 2022. Dragon fruit production in the province is mainly small-scale, the proportion of dragon fruit producing households with a scale of less than 2 hectares accounts for 84.9%. The whole province has about 200 dragon fruit farms and households with an area of 10 - 20 hectares. Up to now, Binh Thuan has 36.7% of the area certified by GAP and equivalent, of which the area certified by VietGAP is 9,037 hectares, accounting for 34.2%; the area certified by GlobalGAP is 453 hectares, accounting for 1.7% of the dragon fruit area in the whole province.

Binh Thuan dragon fruit is present in most domestic markets, mainly concentrated in the northern provinces, Ho Chi Minh City and the central coastal provinces. At the meeting, the leader of the Vietnam Gardening Association also said that dragon fruit is considered the fruit with the largest export turnover in the country. However, in the past 3 years, the export turnover, production area and output of this fruit have been on a downward trend. The reason is the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic and the impact of inflation. In addition, dragon fruit has not had sustainable development in recent times, prices are unstable, and it depends heavily on a few export markets. On the other hand, domestic consumers are less interested in using this fruit while dragon fruit is a strong fruit of Vietnam with a large production area.

K. HANG

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