Da Lat City’s flowers industry could dominate the world market within a decade with the right management, an expert told a recent conference in Da Lat. At the conference at last week’s flower festival to discuss a 10-year development plan for the flower industry, Nguyen Quoc Vong of the Australian RMIT University said Da Lat has the potential be the leading flower exporter in the world.
"The first thing is to establish an information and flower growing technology office to assist farmers," Vong said.
"The office would provide industry figures, including facts on flower varieties and assist scientists and investors with information."
He said currently it was hard to access information about the city’s flower industry.
Da Lat’s mild weather and 360,000 ha of rich farmland make it perfect for growing flowers. Da Lat flowers are exported to Japan, Australia, Taiwan, the US and Europe.
Technology for growing and packaging was one of the most crucial things that flower farmers in Da Lat needed, said Thomas Hooft, general director of Argrivina Company that owns Da Lat Hasfarm, the 16-year-old company that controls up to 98 per cent of Da Lat’s overseas flower exports.
"Farmers learned to build green houses for growing flowers five years after I came and set up the first green house in the city, but growing technology is not merely about green houses.
"Many of the green houses are not built to standard so we [Da Lat Hasfarm] selected only 20 farmers with good greenhouses to cooperate," Hooft said.
Agriculture, based on flower and vegetable production, accounts for 49.7 per cent of the province’s revenue and most of it comes from Da Lat’s flower industry.
The province needs more coordination to manage technology, seedling farming and transport, market information and outlets, said Vo Hieu, a farmer in the city’s Ba Thien Ward.
"Lillies are one of my products and I have to rely on seedlings imported from the Netherlands by a local company," he said.
"Sometimes the seedlings are dead or very weak, but we can’t do anything about it because the cartons they come in are sealed and I can’t check them," Hieu said.
Nguyen Huu Tien, a farmer in the city’s Ward 8, said he had given up his own farm to co-operate with Da Lat Hasfarm because he did not have enough business know-how to be on his own.
"I had no information about market trends so I had some successful crops but lost money."
Da Lat flower industry needs more integration between commercial growers, associations and local government to build up an economic cluster, Dr Victor Stern, CEO of the Universum Invenio Ltd. from Hong Kong said.
"To improve producers’ competitiveness, it is necessary to have business alliances to connect farmers and have structures in place to make use of support from the local government," Chu Ba Thong from the province’s Agricultural Competition Control Division said.
"Some local varieties like gladiolus, carnation and rose have degenerated and research is needed to assist farmers make better seedling selection and improve quality," said the director of the province science and technology department.
Climate change has affected the city with many festival goers noting it was warmer than previous years. Higher temperatures could affect flower growers in Da Lat City where urbanisation is also reducing land for cultivation areas every day.