VietNamNet Bridge – Farmers in Luc Ngan district of Bac Giang province these days are busy working at their litchi orchards, picking up leaves of litchi trees for sale. Meanwhile, they have been warned that if too many leaves are cut, litchi trees will not be able to bloom, which will lead to a crop failure.

Farmers in Luc Ngan district of Bac Giang province, the “litchi metropolis” have been told to collect litchi tree leaves and sell to businessmen who will then export the leaves. The businessmen, who order litchi leaves, have promised to pay farmers high prices for the leaves. Therefore, the farmers have been rushing to collect leaves for sale, ignoring the warnings about the possible crop failure.

The house of Nguyen Dang Dao in Tan Quang Commune of Luc Ngan district has always been full of people for one month. A lot of local farmers come there every day to sell dry litchi leaves they collect from their orchards. Dao said that he has collected nearly 100 tons of leaves.

According to Dao, a lot of people sell dry litchi leaves, because the price is really attractive, 1000 dong per kilo. Especially, even the people from the neighboring Luc Nam district have also flocked there to sell dry leaves. They say that dry leaves cannot be used for any purposes; therefore, they clean the orchards and collect dry leaves for sale.

According to Dao, the buyer of the leaves is a company which has the headquarters in Hanoi – Lam Son Company Ltd. The director of the company is Son, who once worked for the Bac Giang Department for Agriculture and Rural Development. However, Son is now is South Korea and he cannot be contacted

Son has requested Dao to collect dry litchi leaves and paid 100 million dong in advance to Dao, so that Dao can rent storehouses and pay farmers. The company has also provided packs and ropes, so that Dao can pack the collected dry leaves.

Dao thinks that after the packing, leaves would be carried out to a storehouse in Hanoi, where they would be pressed and then exported to Japan. At present, the company is still installing its production line; therefore, leaves still have not been carried to Hanoi,

“We will collect more leaves in two weeks more, when the production line installation is completed,” Dao said. “The company said that it will collect all the leaves we have. However, I myself wonder what they need the leaves for,” he added.

Nguyen Ba Duy is another leave collector. Duy pays 800-1000 dong per kilo of dry leaves. Since Duy has been collecting leaves just for several days, he has just got some hundreds of kilos. He said that he is collecting leaves for Do Thi Thuy from the Luc Ngan forestry yard and enjoy the commission of 20 dong per kilo. Besides Duy’s, Thuy also has many other collection points in the commune sof Phuong Son, Hong Giang, Kien Thanh and Tan Moc. However, when reporters asked Duy to give Thuy’s mobile phone number, Duy provided a mobile phone number which does not exist.

Litchi plants would not bloom, if…

In fact, the collection of litchi leaves would not catch such a special attention from the public, if the collection is carried out after the harvesting crop. Meanwhile, it is now really a “sensitive moment” of the litchi life.

Chu Van Bao, Head of the Agriculture Division of the Luc Ngan district, said that it is now not the time for pruning, and that if picking up leaves in big quantities, litchi trees will create buds instead of blooming, which may badly affect the capacity and the litchi output of the crop.

Luc Ngan is the locality which has the highest litchi output. It is also the biggest litchi supplier to the domestic market and Chinese market. In the 2011 crop, Bac Giang alone exported 69,000 tons of litchis to China, or 70 percent of the total output of the Luc Ngan district.

In 2011, more than 100 Chinese businessmen came to Luc Ngan to collect litchis directly from farmers.

The collection of dry leaves at this moment, which may lead to the decreases of the output, has raised big worries among the public. People have recalled the movements of collecting yellow snails, cats and bloodsuckers, which then caused a lot of problems to the agricultural production and the life of people.

Chinese businessmen once flocked to Vietnam to collect cats at high prices, resulting in the multiplication of mice which destroyed the rice fields. Therefore, people have every reason to fear that the massive collection of litchi leaves would badly affect the litchi crop in Vietnam.

Source: TIen phong