Vinh An commune, Tay Son district is a special difficult mountainous locality in Binh Dinh. It has 323 Bana ethnic minority households. They cultivate two crops of rice per year over an area of 40 hectares and reclaim more land in mountainous areas to grow other kinds of agricultural plants with aims to get higher incomes.
In the 2 recent years, they have expanded areas of sugar cane plantation because of stable prices of the produce and suitable purchasing policies of a local sugar processing factory.
Before, most of the reclaimed lands had been used for cultivation of bananas, pine apples, papayas and maniocs.
There had been 15-20 hectares at Kon Mon village for the sugar cane plantation. By 2010, the areas of the sugar cane plantation increased to 39.5 hectares and now are over 40 hectares, twice higher than the 2009.
The local Bana farmers are eager to grow sugar canes because the sugar processing factory creates favourable conditions for their plantation, including loans for breeding sugar canes and fertilizers, says Mr. Dinh Uop, Chairman of Vinh An People’s Committee.
Purchase has been much improved. Purchasing workers from the factory buy the produces right at the sugar cane fields. Prices of the sugar canes are high enough for the farmers to get more profits than from the cultivation of other plants. Any household who grows about 1-2 hectares of sugar canes definitely earns tens of millions VND each year.
If the farmers grow short-day crops like bananas, pine apples, papayas, they have dozens of thousands of VND, enough to buy food for their families.
In case they grow sugar canes, they harvest only one crop per year but earn a relatively large sum of money, big enough for savings or spending on necessary needs.
Notably, sugar cane plantation is quite simple. The farmers can spray herbicide as they start to grow new crops. This leads to non-energy consuming in weeding the fields.
The mountainous fields are quite fertile, resulting in less uses of the fertilizers. The farmers may keep the same sugar canes over 2-3 years after taking turns in the harvests, reducing costs.
Although outputs of the sugar canes aren’t high, each local farmer household can earn from at least 10 million VND to dozens of million VND upon areas of their cultivated land. In 2010, many even earned 40-50 millions of VND from the sugar cane plantation.
Given the contexts of stable prices, simple practices of cultivation and convenient purchase of the factory, the Bana farmers at Vinh An will keep on expanding the sugar cane plantation in the future.
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