Nam Dan farmers 'hit it big' as pumpkin prices hit record high

After the flood, the water on the banks and fields has receded, farmers in Thuong Tan Loc commune (Nam Dan) rushed to the fields to harvest the first pumpkin of the season. Pumpkin fruit has become the main crop in the autumn-winter season in this low-lying commune.

“Pumpkin plants have been planted in Thuong Tan Loc for 3 years now. This is a drought-resistant crop, easy to care for, has few pests and diseases and has a fairly high yield. Pumpkin plants are planted in early June, harvested in September, and last until October,” said Mr. Tran Xuan Hung, Director of Thuong Tan Loc Agricultural Service Cooperative.

According to statistics, the whole Thuong Tan Loc commune has 90 hectares of pumpkin, with 700 households growing, some households grow large areas up to 4-5 sao, the smallest households grow about 1 sao. The time when pumpkin is harvested coincides with the rainy and stormy weather, green vegetables are scarce in the market, so the price of pumpkin is often high, about 4,000 - 6,000 VND/kg.

However, this year, due to the impact of storms and rains, vegetable growing areas in the North suffered heavy damage, so the price of squash has reached a record high. Currently, the selling price at the field is 10,000-11,000 VND/kg, 2.5 times higher than last year.

According to rough estimates, each sao costs about 800,000 to 1 million VND in investment costs. Now, the pumpkin plants have yielded the second and third harvests, with good harvests and prices, so people are excited.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Hien, Minh Tan hamlet, Thuong Tan Loc commune said: "This crop, my family planted 4 sao of pumpkin, and has now harvested the third crop, yielding about 500 kg of pumpkin. It is estimated that by the end of the crop, the yield will be about 2 tons of pumpkin. This year, the pumpkin crop is good and the price is good, so I am very excited, after deducting expenses, I still earned about 20 million VND."

The price of this squash is very high, at times reaching 12,000 VND/kg, and now it is 10,000 - 11,000 VND/kg, twice as high as the average of many years and 4 times higher than in 2022.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Huong, a trader who specializes in purchasing pumpkins in Nam Dan to supply to various places, said: “This year’s pumpkins are very easy to sell. I buy as much as people harvest. There are days when I buy tons of fruit. The price of pumpkins is many times higher than in previous years, so it is easy to buy.”

Thuong Tan Loc pumpkin is a gourd variety, fragrant, chewy and can be preserved for a long time, each fruit weighs only 1-1.5kg so it is popular in the market. In addition to harvesting and selling ripe fruit, when the plant is growing strongly, the tops and flowers are harvested by households to sell as vegetables with high nutritional value, when the fruit is young, it can also be sold for food processing, priced at 10,000 - 15,000 VND/kg.

As the locality with the largest pumpkin growing area in the province, the crop brings high economic efficiency on alluvial land. However, the people of Thuong Tan Loc do not intensively cultivate squash but instead rotate crops. After the watermelon crop ends, they plant squash. After harvesting squash, they plant sticky corn or peanuts and vegetables.

Thanks to that, pumpkin plants do not get bored with the soil, are isolated from disease sources, and give high yield and good quality. And most importantly, the price of the autumn-winter pumpkin crop is always higher than other crops of the year because green vegetables are scarce at this time./.