Strange but interesting: Growing tangerines with fresh fish juice, earning 6 billion a year

In order for the tangerine tree to grow well, produce many fruits with a rich sweet taste and ensure food hygiene and safety, in addition to applying scientific and technical measures in production, this farmer also buys fish to ferment and press to extract juice to fertilize the tangerines.

This is a new method that has not been applied by any tangerine grower, but has helped him earn more than 6 billion VND/year from his 4.7 hectare tangerine garden.

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Nhan next to his family's billion-dollar tangerine garden. Photo: Khanh Phuc

From the fruit vendor

Before starting the story of growing tangerines with Mr. Nhan, we had the opportunity to walk around the lush, fruit-laden tangerine garden of 4.7 hectares that he owns.

Born into a large family in Can Tho City, due to family difficulties, while studying in secondary school, Mr. Nhan had to quit school to work for hire to help his family. In 2003, he got married and moved to his wife's hometown in Tan Phu District (Dong Nai Province) to live.

In his wife's hometown, due to lack of land for production and difficult family finances, he chose to sell fruit on the street to make ends meet. Although the income from this job was not high, it was enough for Nhan and his wife to cover their living expenses. He pursued and stuck with this job for more than 5 years until he invested in opening a fruit purchasing warehouse and then bought land to grow tangerines.

According to Mr. Nhan, in 2009, he opened a fruit purchasing warehouse, on average he purchased 7-8 tons of fruits such as tangerines, rambutans, jackfruits and durians every day. During this time, he often went to fruit gardens to buy goods.

Since then, he has proactively researched and learned the techniques of growing tangerines from garden owners who are his customers. He realized that tangerines are an easy-to-grow fruit tree, suitable for hilly land and the investment cost is not too high compared to other difficult fruit trees. To increase his income, Mr. Nhan decided to rent a 7-star tangerine garden from people in Tan Phu district (Dong Nai) to take care of and harvest himself.

To the billionaire who grows tangerines on barren land

Mr. Nhan said: “Every year, after deducting investment costs, the 7-sao tangerine garden rented out brings my family an income of about 400 million VND. But after renting it for 3 years, the garden owner took it back, so I felt very sorry. Therefore, I decided to go to Da Huoai and Da Teh districts (Lam Dong) to buy land to grow tangerines.”

After many months of living in Da Huoai and Da Teh, Mr. Nhan chose a 4.7-hectare plot of land that he liked in Village 7 (Quang Tri Commune, Da Teh District) and decided to invest more than 1.5 billion VND to buy it. Immediately after that, he started to prepare the land, invest in an automatic irrigation system, use B40 nets to fence around the garden and plant 2,700 tangerine trees on the entire area.

Thanks to the good application of scientific and technical measures in care, the tangerine garden of Mr. Saviour grew well, had few pests and diseases, and exactly 26 months later, the tree began to flower and bear fruit.

According to Mr. Nhan, for the tangerine garden to grow well, it is necessary to regularly monitor the growth and development process to know what the tree needs and promptly supplement the necessary nutrients for them. For example, when you see thin tangerine leaves, you know the tree lacks nitrogen; if you see a stunted tree, it is definitely lacking calcium; or when the fruit has rough skin and hard segments, it is due to a lack of potassium... so you must supplement the tree immediately.

Talking about his experience, Mr. Nhan shared: “Naturally, tangerines usually bloom in the 10th and 11th lunar months every year and are harvested in the 6th and 7th months. However, to achieve high efficiency, it is necessary to apply scientific and technical measures to make tangerines bloom and bear fruit as desired. That means we must know how to grasp the market demand and prices to find ways to make tangerines bloom and bear fruit at a time when no one else has them but we have them, then we can sell them at a high price.”

One thing that sets him apart from other tangerine growers is that he limits the use of chemical fertilizers to ensure food safety and hygiene conditions for consumers. In addition to using microbial fertilizers on the market, Mr. Nhan also buys fresh fish to ferment and use as fertilizer for his tangerine garden.

Currently, he has 6 fish tanks, with a capacity of 700 - 800 kg. After buying fish, he uses biological products to "destroy" the unpleasant odor and pathogens, then mixes the fish juice with cold water to fertilize the tangerine trees. Every week, he fertilizes the tangerine garden with fresh fish juice. As a form of microbial fertilizer, fresh fish juice contains all the nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, calcium... to help the tangerine roots grow well. Thanks to that, the tangerine garden is always green, with large fruits, shiny skin and high sweetness.

By effectively applying scientific and technological measures to production, along with "special" care regimes, in the last harvest, his family obtained a total output of nearly 250 tons of tangerines. With an average selling price of 25 - 30 thousand VND/kg, it brought his family an income of more than 6 billion VND/year.

Currently, he has bought nearly 15 hectares of land in Quoc Oai commune (Da Teh) to grow tangerines and some other fruit trees such as green-skinned grapefruit and longan...