Promoting the advantages of hill gardens

(Baonghean) - At this time, many forest planting households in Vung Bung - Hamlet 15, Tan Huong Commune (Tan Ky) have basically closed the spring forest planting area.

Mr. Luu Van Thanh and his wife - Hamlet 15 contracted 20 hectares of hilly forest land. Thanks to proactively hiring workers in a timely manner, he has so far planted 11 hectares of new acacia forest. At the foot of the hill, he has arranged 2 reserve seed areas with over 50,000 trees. Mr. Thanh excitedly said, “Afforestation is still the most sustainable economic development direction on this land. Tan Huong Forestry Seedling Cooperative has ensured the supply of seedlings. Product output is easy to consume. I harvested 11 hectares of acacia, minus transportation and labor costs, I still made a profit of 230 million VND (within 5-6 years). In Tan Huong, such effective afforestation models are not rare. Stretching across the hills of hamlets 4, 7, 8, 14, 15 are strips of raw material forests connecting one another to form a key economic zone of the commune... Currently, the whole commune has planted 879 hectares of forest/1,135 hectares of forestry land. Many households have 20-23 hectares of planted forest.

Rubber hill of Ms. Truong Thi Minh - Dien Chau hamlet (An Ngai farm), Tan An commune.

The appearance of rubber trees in Tan Ky marks a miraculous change in the hill garden economy here. This is the 9th consecutive year that Ms. Truong Thi Minh's 0.6-hectare rubber garden - Dien Chau hamlet (Tan An commune) has yielded a harvest. The initial investment for rubber planting was quite large (over 65 million VND/ha). However, according to her calculations, the average selling price of rubber latex is 10-12 thousand VND/kg, at peak times it reaches 25 thousand VND/kg. Each year, there are 7 months of latex harvesting (May to December), on average each month she earns 8-11 million VND from latex and mixed latex. Each year, after deducting the investment cost for exploitation of 10 million VND/year, she has a net income of 75 million - 136 million VND. She is excited: "Thanks to rubber, my family has paid off all the debt to the bank. Built a spacious house. Rubber is at the top of the income list on hill garden land".

The total natural area of ​​Tan Ky district is over 76 thousand hectares, of which over 60% is hilly land. With a suitable slope of about 20 degrees, this is considered a key production area of ​​the district. Mr. Tran Thuc Ba - Vice Chairman of the Gardening Association of Tan Ky district, said: The whole district currently has over 140 thousand people. If we only rely on production on alluvial land, rice fields and field land, we will not be able to get rich. From the actual situation of the locality, the guiding viewpoint of the district is to promote the hill garden economy in the direction of creating large-scale, concentrated commodity raw material areas such as paper raw material areas, rubber trees, sugarcane, cassava... Most of the hilly areas have been assigned to farming households to manage depending on the conditions and circumstances of individual households. Along with that, the district mobilizes people to renovate mixed gardens to grow raw materials for sugarcane, rubber, and oranges. Convert ineffective hilly land from growing corn to growing sugarcane. The district assigned the Gardening Association the responsibility to proactively build hill garden economic models, find plants and animals with production value. Build VAC, VACR models with income from 100-150 million VND/ha/year to guide people.

The district has built 5 economic zones on concentrated garden and hill land. The first zone is the raw material growing zone. Every year, the whole district deploys for people to plant nearly 1 thousand hectares of new forests. This zone is spread over many localities with large forest land funds such as Tan Huong, Dong Van, Tien Ky, Phu Son. The second zone grows cassava as raw material to supply the Yen Thanh and Thanh Chuong cassava starch factories. On average, each year the district grows 2,000 hectares of cassava, mainly concentrated in 14 communes on the right bank of the Con River such as Dong Van, Nghia Phuc, Giai Xuan, Tan Hop, Tien Ky. The third concentrated economic zone is the sugarcane zone. Up to now, the whole Tan Ky district has over 5,000 hectares of standing sugarcane, ensuring an abundant source of raw materials for the Song Con Sugar Factory. Of which, over 3,000 hectares of sugarcane are grown by people on garden and hill land. In the localities of Tan Xuan, Giai Xuan, Nghia Phuc, Nghia Dong... sugarcane is grown intensively for high productivity of 100-130 tons/ha. Sugarcane has increased the income of Tan Ky people from 50 million VND (previously growing rice) to 90-100 million VND/ha/year (growing sugarcane). The 5th economic zone is to develop nearly 1,000 hectares of grassland/year to develop buffalo and cow breeding. This area is concentrated in Nghia Dong, Nghia Phuc, Tan An. Thanks to that, the district has maintained and developed a large herd of buffalo and cows in the province.

Thanks to the good development of potential in forming concentrated raw material areas on hilly garden land, up to now, the whole district has over 500 households building VACR integrated farm and ranch models. On average, at least 3 hectares/model. Mr. Tran Thuc Ba said that the hilly garden economy in Tan Ky accounts for over 70% of the total agricultural proportion in the area. In the coming time, the district will continue to intensively increase crop productivity to create more commodity products, contributing to increasing the production value on hilly land.

Luong Mai