01 September 2011
Upon the invitation of a good friend, Wilson Yean, I had my first ever visit to Vietnam. Wilson, who is Taiwanese, has been a resident of the Philippines for a long time, and who, I believe, has after more than 20 years, practically adopted the country as his second home. I can also say that he has done the country well, and has given a number of our countrymen a lot of good opportunities. The primary reason for the Vietnam trip was for me to see firsthand the guava plantation of his friend, Mr. Hong, which he has for some time been proudly telling me about.
I flew into Vietnam with another friend Ogie Ong and was met at the Ho Chi Minh International Airport by Frank Yean, Wilson’s son, and our host there. We immediately took an approximately 3 hour car ride westward from HCM City to Hon Thanh, in Binh Phuoc province to what I was told is Mr. Hong’s second farm. Arriving there late in the evening, we settled down for the night and slept in one of the farm houses.
The Hon Thanh farm is a 100 hectare farm where I saw, the following morning, hectares and hectares of it planted to Taiwan variety guava trees. The pear shape fruit it bears can grow as big as a soft ball, the green peel as crispy as can be, has a meaty central pulp - or core - with minimal seeds, and tastes sweet with a pleasant tinge of sourness. I was made to understand that about 75 hectares was already planted to guavas, and some parts, particularly section borders, planted to jackfruit.
Later in the morning I was able to interact with the farm owner, Mr. Hong Hsien Pao, who arrived from another site. In between sips of Chinese tea in his farm office he related his venture into farming in Vietnam, through Frank, who acted as interpreter, and which I’m now relating, as how I understood it.
Mr. Hong, who like Wilson is also Taiwanese, went to Vietnam about 15 years ago and saw the vast countryside that can be developed. Although a Chinese Medicine Doctor, he recognized the opportunities that are available and pursued the development of raw land into fruit tree farms, taking advantage of Taiwanese farming technology. He initially leased from the Vietnamese government his first farm, a 50 hectare piece of land, located in Bin Duong province, to which he initially planted Taiwanese mango trees. Encouraged by his success with the first farm, he applied for and was granted another lease for his second farm. Later on he was once more granted a lease for an additional 500 hectares (currently in the process of development and already partly planted to guavas) in Bu Dop, his third farm, also in Binh Phuoc province. All in all he has to his name an aggregate of 650 hectares of land, covered by 50 year leases.
Mr. Hong decided to introduce the Taiwan guava in Vietnam about five years ago, and as the population took to recognizing and liking the fruit, he gradually increased the hectarage planted to it. Based on the info that I gathered, there is at least an aggregate of 100 hectares planted to guava in his three farms, the largest area of which is in Hon Thanh (accounting for about 75 hectares) that can produce 80 tons monthly, and consumed mostly in HCM City.
The fact that Mr. Hong, a foreigner in Vietnam, was able to successfully organize, operate, and grow a fruit tree farm business into a 650 hectare enterprise is, to me, already amazing. What I find more amazing however is his success in propagating, just in the last 5 years, the guava into a sustainable business that involved both the production of the fruit and the creation of the demand for it (in a locality where it is neither a traditional farm product nor a regularly consumed item).
I would hazard to attribute the success of his farm operations significantly to four factors, namely: the right technology, his generosity with respect to the training and material needs of his workers, the strict adherence to the quality of the fruit, and the management system he adopted.
The use of the Taiwan guava cultivar technology was just perfect, given that it takes only about seven months for the tree (planted as a rooted cutting) to start bearing fruit. The fruit size is encouraged by hand thinning (removal of some fruits from a branch while still small), the use of organic fertilizer sourced from nearby fowl farms, and regular pruning of the branches. The retained fruits while still small are then protected from insects and damage by immediately covering them with 2 layers of wrappers, a latticed styro bag and a transparent plastic bag that stays until harvest time. Most of the trees are kept between 4 to 6 feet high, through pruning, for easy tending and harvesting which can be done the whole year round.
The education and training of the workforce regarding the technology required has also been adequately addressed as Mr. Hong personally made it a point that each one clearly understood and is capable of executing the necessary tasks. This capability is regularly measured through the results that they generate and which are compared to the performance standards that have been set and agreed upon in terms of farm production volume levels, and fruit quality levels.
As to the workforce’s material needs, Mr. Hong spends for all of the inputs, and shares the profits (net of all cost) with the workforce at a 65/45 basis, with the bigger portion given to them. In addition, there are also various bonus schemes that are target based. This arrangement has provided the members of the workforce with enough prosperity to enable them to acquire possessions that improved their quality of life, like, better houses, house appliances, motorcycles, and even in starting their own small farms.
The quality control for the fruit is quite stringent, starting with the size and appearance. Upon harvest, which is done on a daily basis, each team sorts the fruits 100% classifying them into class A, B and C, prior to packing. Class A are the big ones with flawless skin, class B are the smaller ones and those with marks, and the class C are those with defects that needs to be cut off. Class A, which accounts for at least 80% of the harvest, goes exclusively to the HCM City market, while the class B & C are for the other markets. The sweetness of the fruit is also checked using a handheld refractometer that can measure the refractive index of the guava juice in Degrees Brix (a measurement of the dissolved sugar-to-water ratio of a liquid). A standard ranging from 8 – 10 Degrees Brix is adopted and met by the farm.
The management style that Mr. Hong adopted is one that I would describe as a combination of an empowered/focused team system, and management by objectives. What he did was to subdivide the farm into 5 hectare lots (with 2000 trees), and assign a team of 10, usually relatives, headed by a supervisor. After the teams have been trained on the technology of tending and operating the farm, and supported by Mr. Hong’s spending for 100% of inputs, they are left to decide by themselves on how the required tasks are to be done and by whom. Their performance is measured by the results they produce in terms of production volume and product quality, and which would also be the determinant of the income that the members of the team will earn. The successful teams continue to run their farm, but those who do not meet the grade are penalized – even to the extent of termination of their employment. Apparently the system is working, given what I observed as the upbeat behaviour of the workforce, the seemingly well tended and organized appearance of the farms that I visited, as well as the rate of growth and expansion of the guava farm business over the last 5 years. Mr. Hong, who struck me as very relaxed and deliberate, is the first of various amazing observations I had of Vietnam during my trip there, and I understand that at least 200 people are benefiting directly from his enterprise. I got the impression that he does not have any qualms about sharing his knowledge about his business; with the way he freely shared his experiences. I also understand that there are already some Vietnamese who, with his help, followed suit with the same kind of business and I naturally felt envious for my country, so that I sort of insinuated to him the possibility of his exploring doing a venture in the Philippines. He responded in the positive, and I understand he has plans to visit in the future. In retrospect, given the nation’s program to re-energize agriculture, maybe, our potential countrymen-investors might want to study the techniques and system adopted by Mr. Hong as it may give them a better batting average for success vis-a-vis what Mr. Hong had in Vietnam.
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