After more than 2 years of stagnation due to the COVID-19 upheavals, since the beginning of this year, many businesses in Da Nang have returned to Hoa Vang District to make surveys and find investment opportunities and develop safe and organic vegetable areas, high-tech vegetables, combine both agriculture and tourism according to the development orientation of the district and the city.

Engineers and farmers of Afarm High-Tech Agriculture Joint Stock Company in Hoa Phu Commune, Hoa Vang District are seen harvesting vegetables. Photo: THANH TINH

This is a good sign for vegetable areas in Hoa Vang District to raise their brand, and at the same time create an opportunity for local people to have jobs and stable incomes.

Exciting atmosphere resumes

In Phu Son Nam Village, Hoa Khuong Commune, one day in mid-August, the farmers of the OLAI Cooperative were busy preparing soil, media, materials, and seedlings for the new crop. Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, the Director of OLAI cooperative excitedly boasted that the cooperative is urgently preparing to sow seeds for vegetable production in early September to serve the people of Da Nang and neighbouring cities and provinces.

Pointing to the overgrown grassy land being cleared by farmers, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Hoai Linh, 70, said that: “The OLAI Cooperative was born as a gift from my son to me. Since kicking off this project, I have come here to live, day by day looking after the workers, helping with watering vegetables, fertilizing and raising chickens… I feel better in health and meaningful in life.”

According to Mr. Tran Van Giao, the Head of Phu Son Nam village, this land was previously assigned to farmers to produce 2 crops/year (peanut in winter-spring crop, summer-autumn crop for rice). In the following years, the local authorities  advocated the formation of a safe vegetable area in Phu Son Nam.

In 2017, the Phu Son Nam vegetable area started producing products and is well-known by people near and far. However, nearly 2 years ago, the vegetable area was interrupted due to the COVID-19 surge.

Now, the OLAI Cooperative is in charge of managing this vegetable area with a hope of creating more jobs for locals and ensure stable incomes for them.

In a similar vein, in Hoa Hai village, Hoa Phu Commune, Afarm farmers are seen quickly cutting vegetables and packing for delivery. Nguyen Thi My Nhung, 42, said that her family was originally a farmer, so when the farm was established in her hometown, she applied for a job to both have more income and work close to home for easily taking care of children. Besides Ms. Nhung, 4-5 other villagers also said that they are happy to work at the farm because they have a more stable job and income.

Mr. Ngan Van Khanh, an Afarm engineer said that although growing clean vegetables with high technology, the variety of vegetables supplied to the market is very diverse, from mustard greens to spinach, lettuce, amaranth, water spinach, collard greens are all available. In the face of hot weather, vegetables are not as many and beautiful as other seasons but still ensure the quantity and quality for customers, supermarkets and households. Mr. Khanh also said that Afarm is successfully experimenting with producing cordyceps and plans to bring this product to the market.

Forming vegetable areas associated with eco-tourism

According to the Hoa Vang District People's Committee, there are currently some  concentrated vegetable and flower production areas such as the flower production areas of  Nhon Tho in Hoa Phuoc Commune, Duong Son in Hoa Chau Commune, Go Giang and Tuy Loan in Hoa Phong Commune and the vegetable growing areas of Ninh An in Hoa Nhon Commune,  Phu Son Nam  and Hoa Khuong , along wirh those operated by the Farm Hi-tech Agriculture Joint Stock Company in Hoa Phu Commune, the Greentech company in Hoa Khuong Commune, the Hoa Vang Fruit and Vegetables Cooperative in Hoa Ninh Commune.

In addition, Hoa Vang also plans to set up 3 hi-tech agricultural production areas with a total area of 65.9 ha in Hoa Phong, Hoa Phu and Hoa Khuong communes.

Boldly choosing the Phu Son Nam vegetable area as an OLAI’s trial farm model, Mr. Tuan hopes that, by 2025, this place will form a high-tech organic agricultural production point combined with exploiting tourism services targeting many local residents and tourists. Mr. Tuan expressed his hope that the project will not only bring benefits to businesses but also localities.

“Through the formation of agricultural production areas combined with eco-tourism, local people have the opportunity to provide ancillary services such as transportation, accommodation, the sale of typical local products. In addition, when doing projects, local people gain employment opportunities and have stable incomes", Mr. Tuan analysed.

In the immediate future, the OLAI Cooperative will focus on developing agriculture in the direction of organic vegetables and sustainable aquabonics, and then gradually forming tourism products such as experience, camping and cuisine, aiming to form a model of developing agro-ecological tourism in Hoa Vang.

Born in 2018 with the choice of building a smart vegetable growing model, Afarm has received good feedback from customers. According to Mr. Nguyen Tan Phuong, the Director of the Afarm High-tech Agriculture Joint Stock Company, the farm's vegetables are grown according to organic methods, vegetable varieties and fertilizers carefully and strictly selected. Also, Afarm has applied 4.0 Industry’s technologies to the irrigation system, controlling temperature, humidity and light so as to bring to the market the best-quality vegetables.

In addition to developing hydroponic vegetables, Afarm will promote the development of freeze-dried vegetable powder products. “After more than 2 years of the COVID-19 surge, seeing many times when vegetables were cut off and thrown away because they could not be delivered to customers in time, so I thought of freezing vegetables to both retain nutrients in vegetables and transport them to remote destinations. Specifically, we will mix vegetables and fruit together into a freeze-dried powder, then bring to the market products that is good for the health of users and have the effect of curing various types of blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases.”  Mr. Phuong added.

Reporting by THANH TINH – Translating by A.THU