Along with rubber, Phu Giao district has strongly developed pepper trees, mainly in An Binh commune. In the face of this year’s severe and prolonged drought, the district has put focus on ensuring irrigation for the local agricultural production and preventing forest fire.
Phuoc Hoa reservoir still ensures water supply for Phu Giao district’s irrigation at the peak of the dry season
Phu Giao district is now home to more than 35,000 hectares of rubber. And the risk of forest fire on rubber plantations is very high, especially during the dry season. Although the price of rubber latex is only between VND6,000 and VND10,000 per kg, the local people have paid attention to fire prevention on their rubber plantations.
The total area of rubber growing in An Thai commune is about 2,855 hectares and since early this year, the local government has paid more attention to forest fire prevention. Vu Van Chung, Secretary of the communal Party Committee said that since early this year, there was a forest fire case reported in the commune. Thanks to forest fire prevention work well disseminated, losses from the fire case were not great. Since early April, the commune has conducted sectors, mass organizations and hamlets to mobilize the local farmers to sweet their rubber plantations and create spaces in each rubber plot to be able to effectively prevent fire forest.
“Rubber trees have helped residents in An Thai commune rise up out of poverty and the locality become a new-style rural commune. Hence, rubber forest must be protected logically and drastically during the dry season”, Mr.Chung said.
Before the complicated development of this year’s weather, Phu Giao district since mid-March has made an inspection tour of the local drought situation during the 2015 dry season. According to the result of the inspection tour, Phuoc Sang and Tam Lap communes are now home to more than 10,000 hectares of rubber. If this year’s dry season continues being prolonged, the risk of fire on the local rubber plantations will be very great. Therefore, in addition to the efforts by the local government, farmers herein need to regularly sweet their rubber plantations and actively create plant protection spaces.
In An Binh commune, prolonged drought has affected nearly 3,200 hectares of crops & vegetables and more than 300 hectares of pepper trees under harvest.
Pepper trees are now grown most in An Binh commune. To Nguyen Van Cuong, Chairman of An Binh communal People’s Committee, the local farmers are actively digging wells to serve their irrigation demand for pepper trees. It is known that pepper is a kind of plant needing much water. If lacking water, its productivity will go down. Fortunately, the price of pepper has recently reached between VND170,000 and VND200,000 per kg, so the local farmers can afford to dig additional wells to serve their irrigation demand for this kind of plant.
Reported by Phung Hieu-Translated by K.T
