Thung Coong sugarcane is both joyful and worrying.

(Baonghean) - Sugarcane has been a staple crop for the Thai ethnic minority communities in Chi Khe commune, Con Cuong district, for the past 10 years. Many consider it a crop that helps alleviate poverty. However, since it can only be harvested once a year and requires a lot of care, sugarcane is not a viable option for households with few members and limited land. Furthermore, after many years of cultivation, yields have decreased somewhat.

In the early harvests, yields reached 80 tons/ha. Currently, according to estimates from sugarcane farmers, yields are only around 40-50 tons/ha. Within this commune, there is a sugarcane growing area in Thung Coong, a long-standing farming region of the Thai ethnic minority villages, covering about 150 hectares, which the locals reclaimed over 30 years ago.

Access to the sugarcane fields remains very difficult.

For nearly 20 years now, the people of Chi Khe commune have stopped slash-and-burn farming because there is no longer enough forest to support plots of land that could only be cultivated for one season before being abandoned. As a result, they have adopted settled farming. Many decades before that, the villages in Chi Khe had known how to grow wet rice, but due to old farming methods, poor-quality seeds, and low yields, their main food source remained upland rice.

When settling down, people begin to think about choosing suitable crops. Initially, traditional crops like corn, cassava, and sesame are still popular. Some households have tried planting fruit trees such as oranges, lemons, and lychees. Recently, acacia trees are filling in areas with steep slopes that are prone to soil degradation when planting short-term crops.

During the years of searching for suitable crops for the Thung Coong valley, peanuts were thought to be the ideal crop. Over 10 years ago, some households earned tens of millions of dong from growing peanuts. Then, for some unknown reason, the peanuts died en masse as soon as they flowered. This phenomenon affected dozens of peanut-growing households, causing headaches for the farmers as they tried to find solutions. Many measures were proposed, including planting peanuts out of season, but without the desired results. One family sowed over 100 kg of peanut kernels on nearly 2 hectares of land, yet at the end of the season, they only harvested about 100 kg of shelled peanuts.

The villagers of Chi Khe thought they were at a dead end in finding a crop that would bring economic benefits, but a new direction emerged. At that time, Song Lam Sugar Company (Dinh Son – Anh Son) was expanding its raw material area. Recognizing that Thung Coong could be a profitable sugarcane growing area, the local government held a meeting with the households owning land in Thung Coong. Ultimately, sugarcane was accepted because it guaranteed a stable market, even though the initial price per ton of sugarcane purchased at the field was only 230,000 VND/ton. The factory also provided technical support and fertilizer, so many people enthusiastically planted sugarcane. By 2012, the price per ton of sugarcane had reached 950,000 VND. Households with large plots of land and good cultivation practices earned a profit of approximately 50 million VND/hectare annually.

Ms. Loc Thi Ky, who has been growing sugarcane in the Thung Coong economic zone for 10 years, said that in addition to the considerable income from sugarcane, sugarcane leaves are also a plentiful source of feed for livestock farmers in the area, mainly buffalo and cattle. Thanks to the feed from sugarcane leaves, for many years, no buffalo or cattle have died in the neighboring villages during the cold season when grass is scarce.

One inherent difficulty since the early days of sugarcane cultivation in the Thung Coong economic zone is the lack of proper roads. Access to the sugarcane fields is often steep, making transportation very difficult, especially during the harvest season when it often rains, further exacerbating the problem.

Some local people say that the sugarcane varieties grown in the Thung Coong raw material area have low yields and are only suitable for highly fertile soil. After many years of cultivation, the soil in the Thung Coong area is showing signs of depletion. "We hope the factory will invest in high-yield sugarcane varieties for Thung Coong; the people would benefit greatly!" – Mrs. Lo Thi Mien, who has been involved in sugarcane farming for 10 years, expressed her wish.

Huu Vi