According to reporters' records, on hot days in May, if you go along National Highway 61C (Can Tho City), it is not difficult to see durian selling points along the road, sellers sitting under temporary tarpaulins, waiting for customers to stop by to buy.
Talking to Lao Dong Newspaper, Ms. Phan Thi Mai - said that the sharp drop in durian prices this year may be due to the stagnation of the export market, many warehouses restricting imports and tightening standards. Therefore, many traders and gardeners have to bring durians out for retail sale to "fight the fire", salvaging some of the cost of fertilizers and pesticides.
According to Ms. Mai, if at the same time last year, beautiful durian in the garden was purchased at a price of 40,000 - 50,000 VND/kg, now it is only about 20,000 - 30,000 VND/kg.
If only gardeners were'white holes' now because durian takes a lot of investment. Now people sell as much as they can get money for fertilizer and pesticides" - Ms. Mai said.
There is one thing that Ms. Mai also clarified to us, but the price tag is 30,000 VND/kg, which is for low-grade Ri6 durian, not meeting export quality. As for type 1 durian, round and beautiful, with yellow pulp and empty seeds, the price ranges from 60,000 - 70,000 VND/kg.
However, the above price is still much lower than at the beginning of the season and the same period of previous years, at times retail price is up to 100,000 - 120,000 VND/kg.
Thanks to many years of operation, Ms. Mai's family can combine selling to traders, retailing outside the market, wholesale and self-packaging goods to send to other places. However, the female small trader is worried because "in the industry" it has been rumored that many newly planted gardens are losing money, even some houses are losing hundreds of millions of VND because there is no output.
With durian trees, only one crop is harvested each year, so when prices fall, gardeners have almost no way to recover except to hope that the next crop price will recover.
Not far from there, Ms. Nguyen Thi Lan is also fed up because durian retail has not shown signs of recovery.
This week, I bought beautiful durian at the garden for about 40,000 VND/kg, selling it for about 50,000 VND/kg. However, after deducting transportation costs, losses and effort, the profit is very'thin', a few thousand VND per kilogram. In general, how much is sold now" - Ms. Lan shared.
According to Ms. Lan, what is worrying is that the durian area continues to increase rapidly in recent years, making the supply increasingly large, while the output is unstable. Even sellers can hardly survive if there are no signs of recovery.
As Lao Dong newspaper has reported, many opinions believe that the main reason for the durian price plummet is that the Mekong Delta is entering the peak harvest season. Moreover, the hot increase in durian growing area in recent years has led to record output this year, creating great pressure on the domestic consumption market.
However, in any case, the durian retail market in the Mekong Delta in general and Can Tho in particular is still facing difficulties, showing an inevitable shift.
To prevent specialty fruits from falling into the "bumper crop, price drop" and struggling on roads, it is time to have more fundamental solutions in linking the value chain and finding stable export markets.
