Pumpkin prices skyrocket, farmers earn 600 million VND/hectare.

For many years now, about once a week, the sight of trucks of all sizes stopping early in the morning at the foot of Dung Suspension Bridge in Linh Hong village, Thanh Linh commune, Thanh Chuong district to collect green pumpkins and cucumbers has been common.

Currently, despite the challenging weather conditions, winter squash is yielding a bumper crop and reaching a record high price of 16,000 VND/kg, more than three times higher than in previous harvests.

This winter, Thanh Chuong district has had a bumper crop of green squash, and the prices are good. Photo: Tran Dinh Ha

According to Ms. Tran Thi Thuy, Head of the Farmers' Association in Linh Hong village: For many years, the people here have dedicated about 5 hectares of rice land to growing pumpkins. This winter season, with heavy rains and little sunshine, it seemed like a failure, but it turned out to be fortunate. The pumpkins reached record high prices. After 3 months of planting, the entire area was harvested with an average yield of 2 tons per sao (approximately 1000 square meters), selling at 16,000 VND/kg. After deducting costs, each sao yielded an income of about 30 million VND. The total revenue from pumpkins reached about 3 billion VND.

With increasingly high and stable income from growing green squash, the people of Linh Hong village have now focused on bringing electricity to the fields, drilling wells, and quickly preparing the land for planting squash. They will have another squash crop around the upcoming full moon of the first lunar month, and according to the villagers, this crop will surely fetch high prices because demand for vegetables increases significantly at the beginning of the new year, especially at the end of the vegetable season.

Ms. Tran Thi Thuy, Head of the Farmers' Association in Linh Hong village, harvesting green pumpkins. Photo: Tran Dinh Ha.

Earning billions of dong after just three months of cultivating 5 hectares of pumpkins, Mr. Nguyen Trung Si, Chairman of the Farmers' Association of Thanh Linh commune, Thanh Chuong district, also expressed concern. Despite abundant land and human resources in the area, pumpkin cultivation has not received much attention from people in other villages and communes. Not far from Linh Hong village are villages like Linh Truong and Linh Thuy, which also have fertile land near the villages, but they only grow corn, peanuts, and vegetables, yielding low incomes.

Significantly, with the motto "clean, high-quality, and good for health," people have paid more attention to the consumer market, focusing on producing clean agricultural products to meet consumer demand. Many districts have coordinated with local agricultural extension agencies to organize training courses on techniques and methods for cultivating high-value crops; encouraging people to introduce new varieties and farming methods, and developing safe vegetable production areas towards commercial production.