The Plum’s Price Plummet as Soon as the Season Starts

Just a few thousand VND per kg

In Long Sap village, Long Sap commune, Moc Chau town, Son La, these days, Ms. Me Thi Lien and her daughter often carry baskets to the fields before dawn. They rush to pick plums in the early morning when the sun is not yet up and the red-ripe plums are at their best. This year, the plum trees in her garden are laden with fruit, yielding over 30-40kg per tree. However, their joy is short-lived as traders come to buy sparingly and offer meager prices.

“These beautiful plums are only sold for 3,000-5,000 VND per kg, and sometimes the price is forced down to just 1,000 VND per kg. People don’t dare to hire workers to pick them anymore because the selling price can’t even cover the labor cost. We can’t leave them either, it’s frustrating to see them fall to the ground,” shared Ms. Lien.

In Cang village, Chieng Khua commune, Mr. Ha Van Son is also experiencing a sad plum season. His family relies on their few dozen plum trees as the main source of income for the year. During the harvest, Mr. Son and his wife wake up at dawn to pick plums and pack them, waiting for buyers. The trees are heavy with fruit, but the prices have dropped drastically, and weak demand puts the entire harvest at risk of going to waste.

“We take care of the trees all year, and now the selling price is so low that it feels like a waste of effort. If we don’t sell them, they’ll spoil, and there are trees that have been ripe for a week, but no one is interested,” Mr. Son said disappointedly.

In Chieng Tuong commune, Yen Chau district, one of the largest plum-growing areas in the district with 300 hectares and a yield of over 2,100 tons in 2024, the situation is no better. According to the locals, since the beginning of the season, the sales have been slow, and prices have been continuously dropping.

It’s not just the farmers who are affected; the traders are also in a difficult position. Ms. Lo Thi Hoa, a trader from Phieng Khoai commune (Yen Chau district), shared: “We also want to help the farmers, but many wholesale markets in the lowlands have stopped importing more plums due to excess stock. If we take the fruit and can’t sell them, we’ll have to turn back and incur heavy losses.”

Disconnect between farming and consumption, processing

Currently, plum farming in Son La is mostly done by individual households, lacking linkage to a value chain. Meanwhile, plums are a perishable fruit, and if not sold quickly, they will spoil and lose value.

Mr. Thao A Trong, Chairman of the Chieng Khua Commune Farmers Association, acknowledged that households currently cultivate a few dozen to a few hundred trees, but the harvest is scattered. Traders only select the larger, more attractive plums, leaving the rest to the farmers to sell individually. The absence of cooperative models or specialized enterprises for collection, preservation, and processing makes it easy for agricultural products to fall into the “bumper crop, low price” situation, as is happening now.

Mr. Giang A Su, Vice Chairman of Chieng Tuong Commune People’s Committee, confirmed that plum prices this year fluctuate between 3,000-5,000 VND per kg, significantly lower than the previous year. “The commune is discussing support measures for the farmers, especially finding large-scale collectors and organizing production in a concentrated manner,” said Mr. Su.

According to Mr. Su, the current challenge is the lack of large-scale collectors, uneven production, and farmers’ limited access to preservation or post-harvest processing techniques. In some areas, like Yen Chau district and Moc Chau town, the establishment of plum-growing cooperatives linked to consumption has initially proven effective. The cooperatives negotiate with enterprises for purchasing, provide traceability labels, packaging, and cold storage, thereby stabilizing prices and giving farmers peace of mind in production.