According to the Gia Lai Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the province currently boasts over 845,000ha of agricultural land suitable for a variety of high-value crops, including key export agricultural products of Vietnam. This strength has attracted the attention of numerous domestic and foreign agricultural investors.
The province has begun 50 cultivation projects with a total scale of over 8,500ha and a total investment capital of over 10,000 billion dong (approximately 400 million US dollars). Among these, 29 projects have received investment policy approval, five projects are awaiting investment policy approval, four projects are included in the investment call list and have attracted investor interest, and 12 projects are included in the investment call list.
Several projects have already commenced operations and are yielding high results, such as Hoang Anh Gia Lai International Agriculture Joint Stock Company, the high-tech medicinal plant and fruit tree cultivation project in Dak Doa District, the high-quality crop seedling center in Chu Puh District, the Quicornac fruit processing factory in Pleiku City, and Dong Giao (Doveco Gia Lai) Export Food Joint Stock Company in Mang Yang District.
The inclusion of bananas on the list of key export crops is considered a bold step by Gia Lai and has attracted the interest of many businesses, including Hung Son High-Tech Agriculture Joint Stock Company.
Nguyen Quang Anh, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hung Son Company, said that bananas are a crop well-suited to Gia Lai's climate and soil conditions. Ten years ago, Hung Son Company also invested in growing bananas in Cambodia. However, transporting products to ports for export was too far and costly. Therefore, the company did a survey and found Gia Lai to be a very suitable area for growing this crop. "We have plans to collaborate with farmers to expand the raw material area, meeting the conditions for granting a planting area code and a packing facility for direct export. Since the land is mainly owned by farmers, cooperation is a way for both parties to benefit," Quang Anh said.
Established in 2020 in Dak Doa District, Gia Lai Province, the Hung Son Company is an enterprise that invests in banana cultivation in the direction of high-tech agriculture, meeting GlobalGAP standards and fully meeting export standards. Currently, the company has developed 400ha of banana cultivation for export in combination with medicinal plant cultivation.
Witnessing Hung Son's banana export plantation in Dak Doa District, we were overwhelmed by the sight of vast, lush green banana fields stretching as far as the eye could see on the fertile, rich, and flat basalt land.
Le Hoang Linh, Director of Hung Son Company's raw material area, said that with this banana plantation, the company can harvest about 12,000tons of bananas per year, generating revenue of about 350-400 billion dong (15 million-17.2 million US dollars) and provide jobs for over 800 local laborers, mainly ethnic minorities in the area.
To manage and develop this vast banana raw material area, the Hung Son Company has applied many high-tech agricultural solutions from the very beginning, such as investing in an advanced drip irrigation system imported from Israel, using drones for spraying and observing the status of pests and diseases on crops, installing a continuous and complete cable car system in all planting areas to facilitate the harvesting and transportation of bananas from the farm to the processing plant.
Thanks to the application of high technology in production, the quality of the company's bananas has significantly improved, and the products meet export standards in many countries around the world, such as China, Korea, Japan, the Middle East, and Singapore. In the future, in its development strategy, Hung Son Company will continue to invest heavily in applying high technology to production, while also researching the expansion of the area and scale of production in Gia Lai Province in particular and the other provinces of the Central Highlands in general.
In addition to traditional crops that have been around for a long time such as coffee, pepper, and rubber, bananas are expected to be a new, promising export agricultural product of Gia Lai./.
- By Thanh Hoa/VNP Translated by Hong Hanh
