On July 23, the City Party Committee, People's Council, Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee, and People's Committee of Can Tho City held a meeting with businesses and investors in 2025.
Here, the leader of a pharmaceutical enterprise informed that in Vinh Chau, Can Tho City (formerly Vinh Chau town, Soc Trang province) there are 4,000 - 6,000 hectares of agricultural land with 1,200 households growing up to 1,700 hectares of purple onions. Of these, 1,248 people were blinded due to growing purple onions, most of which were cornea damage. The ancestral generation of Vinh Chau people grow purple onions with dirty hands and rub them in the eyes, causing cornea damage, and their children continue to grow purple onions.
From the above assessment, this leader requested departments and branches in Can Tho City to create conditions for the company to implement the planting of medicinal plants in Vinh Chau area.
Responding at the conference, Mr. Ngo Thai Chan - Director of the Department of Agriculture and Environment of Can Tho City - affirmed that the above information was not accurate.
Mr. Chan said: "The information that the company said that farmers in Vinh Chau grow purple onions and are blinded and affected by their eyes is not true. This information can help businesses watch online videos about twenty years ago. We confirm that this information is incorrect."
Mr. Chan also informed that for many generations, Vinh Chau people have cultivated about 1,600 -1,700 hectares of purple onions, producing an output of about 160,000 tons/year. However, growing purple onions uses a lot of irrigation water, mainly groundwater, which can affect local water resources.
Therefore, the Department of Agriculture and Environment welcomes businesses that want to lease land for growing medicinal plants in Vinh Chau to develop a sustainable agricultural model.
With the characteristic of a sandy soil, Vinh Chau purple onions have outstanding quality: the roots have beautiful colors, high brittleness, a strong but not black smell and can be stored for a long time without the need for chemicals.
The product has been granted a Certificate of registration of geographical indications by the Department of Intellectual Property and has been recognized as a typical OCOP product of Soc Trang province (old).
During the rice crop, this creates jobs for thousands of idle farmers in the locality with the stages of planting, weeding, harvesting, and bonding.
A long-time purple onion grower in Vinh Chau (name changed) shared that the information about farmers being blinded by growing onions was spread more than 20 years ago. However, his family has been cultivating for decades but has never had eye problems. According to him, at that time, there was a red eye epidemic, combined with not ensuring production conditions, which led to vision impairment in some people.
