The Cashew area in the Central Highlands decreased rapidly

(CDC) - According to the Central Highlands Steering Committee, at current time, the cashew area in the Central Highlands provinces reduce to 76 516 ha, with annual output reach 60,000 to nearly 62,000 tons of cashew nuts, down more than 30,000 ha compared to 2010. Formerly, Dak Lak is the province has the largest cashew area in Central Highlands, with over 45,000 hectares, but it dropped to 25 154 ha at current time. The next are Gia Lai, Dak Nong provinces; however the area also drops dramatically, at present, each province just has over 17,000 ha.

The decreasing of cashew area also means dozens of processing cashew nuts factories for export in the Central Highlands provinces simultaneously closed due to lack of raw materials. Dak Lak has 9 processing cashew factories with a total capacity of exporting 36,000 tons of material / year but this year due to lack of raw materials, many factories have closed.

The previous years, the Central Highlands planted cashew trees massively, unplanned. Even, some remote districts as Ea Soup (Dak Lak), Dak R‘Lap (Dak Nong), Krong Pa, Krong Chro, Ia Grai (Gia Lai) considerd cashew is the tree planting for poverty reduction for ethnic minorities quickly, so the local government created favorabl conditions for investment and development cashew, destroyed natural forests to grow cashewes. In Ea Sup district (Dak Lak), ethnic minorities, as well as garrison army units engaged in economic activities in the area destroyed thousands hectares of natural forest to plant 15 862 ha cashew. Since 2001Krong Pa (Gia Lai province), has invested over 29 billion in construction projects planned for the area this material area of 10,000 hectares, supplying raw materials for processing factories in the locality ... However, due to chasing movement many locals did not plan the cashew trees logically with the land, planted with degraded varieties; further more, the care, pest control did not suit with technical processes, so the yeild was low, only 3 to 9 quintal / ha. Simultanously the price is low, unstable, as a result famers cut cashew unison to grow other trees.

According to the Steering Committee for the Central Highlands, most of the area after cuttingt, the ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands were transferred to replant rubber, pepper and other crops of higher economic value. Only in Ea Sup district, after cuting cashew trees farmers turned to plant economics reforestation, mainly is acacia, paper material for producing factories.

Therefore, the Central Highlands needs to plan specific cashew plantation in each area, surveys and evaluates the current area, at the same time has mechanisms and policies to help ethnic minorities replaced the tribe casshew to create new varieties, grafted, focuses in guiding people to apply scientific techniques methods such as care, fertilizing, pruning, shaping ... to achieve high productivity, high yeild. Besides, there is the need of policies to help ethnic minority households receive loans with low interest rates to invest in renovating the garden, to create conditions for cashew growers obtain higher profits, contribute to limit the "planting - cutting, cutting - planting" as the previous time causing big damages to farmers.

Source: TTXVN