Pepper was once a hope of the whole Central Highlands, but now pushing many farmers into misery.
The rainy season in the Central Highlands has ended, and at that time, Mr. Lac will come to the South. Leaving the grass field green, the farm for months did not start the engine, some goats could not be sold to anyone, Mr. Lac would work as a guard for a restaurant in Saigon.
He had to go to keep the house from being confiscated by the bank. For several months, his family could not pay interest. The land for pepper cultivation was invested by Mr. Lac from the loan which today has withered.
Mrs. Vui tried to stay at Chu Pưh. The fate of her family was not much different from Mr. Lac's, but the fields that were once spent on hope were now a debt. But she stayed and waited for the last gamble: more than a hundred green pepper posts she had survived through the rainy season. A little of the family's remaining capital was poured into it.
But through the rain, the sun is up when the disease outbreaks. Mrs. Le Thi Vui saw some yellow pepper leaves. If infected, the epidemic will spread to the target, from the root to the root, and then the field.
“At that time, it died as fast as people poured boiling water down,” Ms. Vui described a familiar scene. Last year, 20,000 peppercorns died like that, and by the time the furniture in her house was wearing a hat.
“If these guys die, the whole family will have to go out,” she foresaw the family's outcome. In the remote field is now the gray of the abandoned posts and the fear of due debts. On the street, the houses were closed and hung “sign for sale” and “sale of upland land” signs. The people in the hamlet exchanged ears to mouth about the other family, who had fled the debt in the middle of the night. Nobody knows where the house is going, just this afternoon they saw the children coming home from school. Someone told me to go to Binh Duong to work as a worker, there were rumors going to Laos or Cambodia to avoid black credit.
That is the scene of Chu Pưh, Gia Lai. At one time, this region was the pepper capital of the whole world.
In the 1980s, Mrs. Vui's family moved from Gia Hóa to Gia Lai to start a new economy. At that time, in the Central Highlands, in her memory, everything was planted with good trees.
“Like bad pepper or being loved by others, but plugging it into the ground, they will live immediately, grow fast like a blow, without any medicine. Through three rainy seasons, the fruit is collected. One kilogram of pepper was then exchanged for several kilograms of rice, ”Ms. Vui recalled.
From planting pepper to exchanging rice, farmers in the Central Highlands quickly realized that the wires plugged into the red soil could exchange houses, change cars, and exchange their whole lives. It was a glorious era of pepper – the king of spices. According to data from the World Pepper Association, the FOB price of pepper increased more than 4 times in the 1990s. From 1990 to 2000, Vietnam continuously expanded its planted areas. Entering the 21st century, Vietnam has officially won the No. 1 manufacturer in the world.
Then beautiful memories. In the rainy season in 2011, the price of pepper reached VND 120,000 / kg, more than doubling over the previous year. Relatives, neighbors, any wedding or groundbreaking ceremony to build a house, they all want Mrs. and Mrs. Vui to bless. They want to enjoy their luck from the pepper tree of her family. The whole district of Chu Pưh, how many people have built two houses last year, bought an additional piece of land through drainage.
The prosperity is still seen in the old photos: the couple politely standing in a big, luxurious house, cladding everywhere, in front of a flat-screen TV with an audio system, behind is a kitchen cabinet. modern.
Those days Chu Pùh was excited. There, there are high-rise wooden and stone-tiled houses, which sprout up after the harvest date. Homes built always have a large yard covered with cement to dry black gold seeds. Mr. Lac's peasant farm used to transport tons of pepper from the field to the yard. He and the people in the commune had to scramble for parking in front of the farm produce store.
The noise of the peasant farm loudly on the highway, in the fields far away for many long days. The happy faces that day could never be imagined, one day, the pepper tree will push them into a deep pit of debt.
In the rainy season in 2015, pepper price peaked at VND 270,000 / kg. That was the year the disease began to spread on the cords. But not many people care. If pepper dies, cut and replant. Pepper prices are up, 5 times higher than this coffee can “weigh” all. Using profits from previous seasons, borrowing more from banks, Ms. Vui increased the planted area to 10 hectares.
Pepper fever spread around the world. That period, in the newspaper Times of India, Indians cite the examples of “good farmers” for learning from the Vietnamese model. The traditional method of Indian pepper cultivation is intercropping, giving low yields. But by 2015, concrete pillars of intensive pepper – the so-called “Vietnamese model” – began to spring up in the states.
Vietnam has become a gold bar of Indian pepper growers. The country's press, in 2015, when pepper prices peaked, questioned the government: “How can India catch up with Vietnam?”.
In the rainy season in 2016, the price of pepper in Gia Lai suddenly fell to VND 180,000 / kg. The pepper lines are tinged with disease, the yield decreases by 60-70%, many gardens have almost no fruit. But Mrs. Vui is still optimistic: pepper prices will increase again next year like last season, then half of the garden will die, she still has a profit.
It was an innocent belief. Ms. Vui did not realize that hundreds of thousands of farmers are also hungry for the opportunity to change their lives thanks to pepper. From the Central Highlands of Vietnam to the Indian coast of Malabar, from the foothills of the Knuckles mountains of Sri Lanka to the southernmost tip of Indonesia's Sumantra Island, the race for pepper production is booming. Everyone wants to “imitate Vietnam”.
After the peak in 2015, the export price of pepper on the world market began to plummet. From the peak of USD 9,577 / ton, after two years, the export price of pepper from Vietnam was only an average of USD 5,201 / ton, which has lost nearly half its value. Prices fall, but the area under cultivation is constantly increasing.
In the rainy season in 2017, pepper prices fell to 80,000 VND / kg, less than a third of the previous two years. Mrs. Vui was not happy anymore. At the same time, nearly 20,000 drainage posts on her 10 hectares of farmland died. Investment debt starts to swell. Bank debt to maturity. Ms. Vui must seek black credit. Furniture and vehicles in the house were taken to debt.
In the rainy season in 2018, the price of pepper was less than 50,000 VND / kg, Ms. Vui's big house is now empty.
The patrimony of a woman who lifelong sold her face to evaporate the soil with every branch of death. Helpless with a bank profit of VND 39 million per month, she hung signs to sell houses and fields. Real estate prices fell more than half compared to before, but for several months no one called.
A millionaire millionaire now has to change day by day with a few bundles of pumpkin vegetables every morning to sell in the market, along with the worry that the bank will never squeeze home.
Mr. Lac doesn't make a big investment like Mrs. Vui. But after three consecutive years of failure, I also sold the garden and field. He kept regretting the old days, cutting down rubber trees, focusing on each pepper. Wife and children, the elderly mother could not enjoy a happy day. The rickety wooden house tried to renovate a few times, but also stopped to save money for buying fields, buying seeds and buying fertilizer.
He calculated, going to Saigon this time to work as a security guard for the monthly salary of 5 million VND, except for the rent and meals, he also saved nearly 3 million VND, sent home to pay the debt of 200 million VND to the bank. .
Four years ago, Hoa's mother, a widower, mortgaged her home to borrow money from black credit to buy pepper.
But then the target line turns yellow and then dries, before a time to fertilize. The black credit came back to remind me that moms are giving birth to their children. If the taxpayer fails to pay, the creditor will go to court to get the house.
“My mother spent most of my life wandering around the commune, so I heard the court, the police were very scared, I could not sleep all night. In the morning, what she did until noon forgot, “Hoa recalled. Shocked, the woman committed suicide, when her eldest daughter was less than 18 years old.
But the life of her daughter continued to be attached by the target. Like many other Chu Pus farmers, Hoa's husband's family also put all their property on the posts. Now her husband, Hoa, has moved to another district to find new land and spend some money to plant the pepper in the hope of saving the house from the bank.
More than three years after the mother died, the Hoa sisters were still clung to black credit. Sometimes, creditors allow people to harass and demand houses. They threatened, if not take home will report to the police for appropriating property.
Mr. Nguyen Van Khanh, Head of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Chu Puh explained the main cause of the pepper tragedy, that farmers ignored the government's warning and massively expanded their farming areas.
“They grow pepper all in low-lying areas, easily flooded. We have warned many times but no one heard. Farming is of the people, when the price of pepper increases, how can we intervene and stop them, ”Mr. Khanh said.
“This responsibility rests with the government,” said Dang Kim Son, former director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development. “State agencies cannot be dumped because people run after profits, despite the warnings.”
The main reason, according to Mr. Son, is the information gap between producers and markets. The biggest obstacle for farmers now is not capital but information. Farmers who only know information through traders or buying agents will not be able to make reasonable investment decisions.
Farmers chasing profits is the law of course, following the market dynamics. Moreover, farmers do not believe in planning and there is no incentive mechanism to believe in planning.
“As long as the accurate information on the market has not been transferred to the farmers, tragedies like pepper in Gia Lai will not end.”
Even in the golden age of pepper, the dangers to farmers have appeared. Distributed, like poor quality, hoodlums look to the black gold capital as the setting of every typical “gold beach”.
That day, when the pepper lines in the old area, Ms. Luong Thi Bich Phuong rented a car to wade to another province to look for seedlings. Listening to the farmers in the district quarrying in Dak Lak, the Agriculture Institute sells good seedlings, and the expert instructed them to plant there. But just down the bus station there was a trigger to bring back to the garden, without having to go to the hospital. Each peppercorn and stork will be paid by her sister and the garden owner, each of whom pays 20,000 VND.
“I just finished grade 4, the words are not clear. They said this breed came from the hospital so they believed it, later they found out that they had been tricked, ”Phuong said.
Mr. Lac has experienced several deaths and several times to remake it with the knowledge gained from television, from word of mouth experience. Eventually, he was knocked out by pseudobulbs, which were publicly sold in the communal hall.
In the first crop, Mr. Lac planted pepper, “the tree died so quickly that the dry leaves were still sticky on the pole.” In the second case, he dragged the cow to the forest for two months, dug 700 700 woody incense sticks and planted them in the fields to support the pepper lines. He believes incense helps prevent diarrhea. Watching an agricultural program on television, he heard that the infected tree died because of acid sulfate soil. He hired a car to dig out the old soil layer and then spread it down before installing pillars. But pepper still died when not once fertilized.
The third time replanting pepper, Mr. Lac changed the fertilizer type of a company to introduce the meeting hall. They claim this has been certified outside the center, recommended by the consumer experts. But a month later, the original black color of the stool turned to clay. He knew he had to buy fake fertilizer.
The race to the bottom of pepper is not only seen in the Central Highlands. Indian farmers, who still looked at Vietnam only two years ago as “good examples”, are now struggling. The price of black pepper in the Indian domestic market has decreased by more than half compared to 2016. Indian farmers now consider black pepper from Vietnam as a source of tragedy: they ask the government for help, ask for a floor price on pepper Vietnam, or even ban the import of Vietnam pepper to make domestic farmers find a way to live.
Chư Pưh farmers, like Mrs. Vui, are writing a request for help to the Central Government and the Governor of the State Bank, expecting to be frozen. Many applications have been sent, but so far they have not been heard.
The dead peppercorns do not only have direct consequences on the lives of pepper growers. Businesses, fertilizer agents, purchasing agricultural products used to play the second bank to finance farmers investing in pepper fields. Lending money to farmers, buying fertilizer deficient; By harvest time, farmers will sell them. It was a profitable way of doing business for both parties. When the storm swept across, all were on the edge of the abyss.
Standing in front of the debt books if stacking up more than half a meter, the owner of the fertilizer and agricultural product purchasing company Quang Mai confesses “it will probably be lost”. He has been diligent in demanding from 2017 until now and draws the conclusion that this situation will continue, the amount of debt that can be lost, to survive must shrink business.
But anyway, Quang Mai is still lucky to have enough strength to survive this storm of pepper. Their colleague in Iale commune – Chu Pu district last month had to flee the night, bringing with them tens of billions of debt from both banks and black credit.
And the future of the children also wilted with the strings. At Chư Pưh at that time, for many parents, education was an investment with no future.
Dang Thi Phuong Thuy, a mathematics teacher at Nguyen Thai Hoc High School in the district, doesn't remember how many times she went to the house to encourage her parents to go back to school, and had to wipe her tears back when she heard the parents calculate the expenses. Opportunities for the next academic year.
“Only now can we save lives for our family, but the word is also helpless,” a mother who is in debt with more than a billion dong told her teacher. She had to quit school to work as a family to pay off the debt, when there was only one semester left to finish the 12th grade.
This summer, on a highways crossing Chu Pưh, Thuy witnessed her students bring backpacks to catch an overnight bus to Saigon and to Laos for hire. There are children who are still struggling to follow the school year, but had to use the summer vacation to come to Laos to work as rubber farm workers.
Standing under dry pepper posts, farmers plan to rebuild their lives. After 30 years of leaving Hue to find Gia Lai to start a business, once again, Mr. Lac had to leave his homeland. Ms. Phượng and Mrs. Vui replanted their vegetables. But the tons of Phuong's zucchini leaves now for borer because traders do not appear when the incident is reached; and Mrs. Vui's pumpkin field did not bear fruit after the rainy season.
No one could have imagined that the withered faces of that pepper, just a few years ago, would have been the driving force of a global multi-billion dollar game that would influence policy. foreign coating. After finishing high school, they carried on themselves an economic branch, gambling directly with the world market.
It was a turnaround game: information about the world market, areas of growing areas, yields, crop changes and prices are now publicly available (in English and on the Internet).
But in the field, Mrs. Vui or Mr. Lac did not know about that. In 2016, even when she died, Ms. Vui was naive enough to believe that prices would rise, as it had increased for a decade.
“Growing pepper is as easy as planting sweet potatoes” – she remembers that year, and advised her son so that he gave up his intention of finding a job and stayed to plant pepper.
Posts: Bảo Uyên – Đức Hoàng
Image: Thanh Nguyen
