Dragon fruit prices have unexpectedly soared. Merchants are rushing to export to China.

VietNamNet sums up the “odd news” in Vietnam last week.

Dragon fruit farmers in Binh Thuan Province have cut down thousands of trees and switched to other crops after suffering heavy losses due to low prices.

In some European countries, dragonfruit is considered ‘super food’, priced at VND650,000 per kilogram. Vietnam has 1.4 million tons of the fruit each year and farmers sell it at only VND3,000 per kilogram.

While dragonfruit in Vietnam has seen prices plummet, the fruit is being sold for VND200,000 per kilogram in Australian supermarkets and VND600,000 in the Netherlands.

The Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry (HUFI) have successfully researched and produced the first instant noodle product with dragon fruit ingredient in Vietnam.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) has asked its Vietnam Trade Offices (VTRs) overseas to help connect Vietnamese enterprises with foreign partners to boost farm produce exports.

The Viet Nam Flour Corporation (Vikybomi) has created new food products made from wheat flour and farm produce such as dragon fruit and watermelon amid a reduction in fruit exports to China.

Some retailers have reportedto the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) that there is no more farm produce to rescue. But farmers still complain that their farm produce remains unsalable.

Thousands of trucks are still heading for the Vietnam-China border gates, though the exports are getting stuck because of the Covid-19 epidemic.

Exporters of agricultural products, especially dragon fruit, must improve quality and focus on the domestic and new export markets and reduce their dependence on the Chinese market amid the current epidemic outbreak, experts have said.

China has fallen from the No 1 position on the list of Vietnam’s biggest rice export markets into the seventh position. The growth of seafood exports to the market has also slowed down.

The white-flesh and red-flesh dragon fruit areas in Binh Thuan and Long An provinces are being controlled by Chinese businesses who have come to Vietnam to set up collection storehouses.

Vietnamese exporters have been warned of difficulties in 2019 because of changes in China’s cross-border trade policies.

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