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Cashews had their day?
Hundreds of hectares of cashew trees have been chopped down by farmers in the south as they incurred losses on the last crop due to price decreases. They are considering growing rubber as the ‘white gold’ is getting more and more valuable.
Cashew plants dying
Tan Uyen district in Binh Duong province, the chief town of cashews, has become gloomy these days. Farmers in the district are chopping down cashew trees and preparing to grow rubber. It seems the golden age of the cashew plant is over.
In Hoi Nghia commune in Tan Uyen district, where all houses and all people previously grew cashew trees, there are only several plants left. However, these will also be chopped down in some days.
La Van Muc, a farmer in Hoi Nghia commune, showed us his 6,000 sq m cashew garden. “I have to chop down all the cashew plants because they cannot bring money.”
Muc said that he is planning to grow rubber as rubber is getting more valuable in the market. Meanwhile, he could only get VND7,000 for one kilogramme of cashews.
Muc and many others farmers in the southern region have decided to give up growing cashew plants, which once helped sustain their lives.
Le Van Long in hamlet 3 of the same commune has also chopped down 300 cashew trees on the area of 1.6 ha, and plans to grow rubber. Long sold the cashew plants as wood for VND70,000/plant.
The road to Tan Uyen district is now littered with cashew wood from the chopped down plants. Nguyen Van Nguyen, a staff of the Hoi Nghia commune People’s Committee, said that the commune once had 200 ha of cashew plants.
The situation is the same in Binh Phuoc province, another big town of cashew plants.
Previously, Binh Phuoc had 171,000 ha of cashew which provided 154,000 tonnes of raw cashew nuts, or 44% of the country’s total output. However, the cashew growing area had been narrowed by 1/3 by July 2008.
Besides Binh Phuoc and Binh Duong, cashew trees are also being chopped down in Dong Nai and central provinces
Will the golden age return?
Nguyen Duc Thanh, Acting Chairman of the Vietnam Cashew Association (Vinacas), said that it is understandable why farmers are giving up cashews to grow rubber.
Farmers now can reap VND10mil in turnover for every hectare of cashews, while they expect to earn much more with rubber trees.
However, Thanh believes that Vietnam should pay appropriate attention to developing cashew growing area, as cashews remain a main export item of Vietnam. Cashew nut exports brought $850mil in turnover in 2008.
If Vietnam does not develop cashew growing areas, cashew nut processing workshops will have to run with expensive import materials.
In the first six months of the year, enterprises imported 150,000 tonnes of cashew nuts from Cambodia and South Africa at high prices. The imports from Western Africa in late May 2008 were priced at over $900/tonne, much higher than $820/tonne in early May, while the price soared to $1,300/tonne in early June 2008.
Vietnamese cashew nut exporters are now like cats on hot bricks as they have to collect raw cashew nuts for processing to fulfill orders, while the last crop failed with output down by 300,000 tonnes.
Thanh said that the problem now with cashews is low investment. Vinacas has proposed that the government provide VND50-60bil in a plan to give technical support to raise cashew yield from the 1tonne/ha now to 3-4 tonnes/ha.
Vinacas has also called on the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to reconsider the programme on cashew plant growing areas. Cashew plants need to be developed in suitable areas in order to bring the highest possible efficiency.
VNN
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