Leaders of the Huy Chi cooperative in Hung Tien commune, Hoa Binh province’s Kim Boi district, discuss ways to improve economic efficiency of lemongrass growingand processing with local people.

In 2015, after a trader came to install a lemongrass essential oil extraction machine, local villagers had soon realised the potential of lemongrass business, which generates revenue five times higher than rice farming on the same area. So the villagers began expanding the plant’s growing areas.

The commune has so far cultivated 80 hectares of lemongrass across four out of its five villages but it still can not supply enough for the market.

In early 2018, the commune’s Party Committee and People’s Committee decided to make lemongrass one of the local key agricultural products and provided over 40 million VND in financial support for 34 lemongrass growers to scale up their production.

The Huy Chi cooperative was founded three years ago. It started to cooperate with the villagers, helping them bring lemongrass essential oil to the market. Many local farmer households have escaped from poverty and even gotten rich from the lemongrass.

Local authorities and the cooperative have also made lemongrass products and lemongrass essential oil the main product of the nationwide programme "One Commune, One Product” (OCOP) between 2018 – 2020.

Lemongrass is a drought-resistant and pest-resistant plant adaptable to grow in low hills, according to Bui Van Thong, a farmer from Ba Bi village. The first harvest can be obtained after six months of cultivation, and farmers can harvest two crops per year, he explained. The lemongrass needs to be replanted after three years.

He said his family and others in the village grow lemongrass not only on seperate fields but also together with citrus fruits following intercropping method.

The expansion of lemongrass areas coupled with improvement in productivity and profit from the lemongrass farming have been a new way of developing agriculture in Hung Tien, helping local people escape from poverty. To date, the commune’s poverty rate dropped to 18.5 percent with all lemongrass households lifted from the poverty list.

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