A bitter harvest of salt

Salt fields are filled, but workers are not hurrying to harvest it. They know they will not be able to sell salt for much money.

Saigon Tiep Thi reporters met Nguyen Xuan Hay, 67, in a salt field. His cooperative assigned Hay and 18 other salt workers three hectares of salt. They must produce 300 tons and pay the cooperative 30 percent of their sales.

Hay explained that, in 2009, he collected 45 tons of salt and the price was 1,500 dong per kilo. He is not sure how much salt he will harvest in 2010, but the salt price has dropped dramatically to 350 dong per kilo.

If eighteen people collect five tons of salt within three days, it can be sold at 1.8 million dong.  After they pay 500,000 dong to the cooperative, they must divide the remaining 1.3 million dong for five days of hard work.

Truong Cong Hieu, Chair of the 1.5 Cooperative, stated that the salt price is staying at its lowest level of the last four years. A lot of farmers have incurred losses and do not want to harvest salt, because the more they harvest, the bigger their losses.

Truong Thi Chieu, Deputy Chair of Ninh Diem Commune’s People’s Committee, acknowledged that most people cannot make a living on salt. Young workers have left to work in factories and only the old and weak have remained to harvest salt. This explains why most cooperative members are elderly.

In Ben Tre province, thousands of Ba Tri salt workers are left with tens of thousands of tons of salt, because they cannot find buyers even at record low prices.

Pham Van Muoi, an owner of 10,000 square meters of land, met reporters as he labored in his salt field under a scorching sun: “The price has been staying low at 650 dong per kilo, but no one wants to buy salt. We are going to be hungry.”

Nguyen Van Binh, another salt field owner, compared this year with 2009.  He noted that last year at this time, many boats arrived to purchase salt and prices increased daily.  This year, no one wants to buy salt. “How can we live if we cannot sell salt? We cannot eat salt instead of rice,” Binh complained.

According to Mai Van Tri, an officer from Ba Tri’s agriculture sub-department, there are 972 hectares of salt fields in the district, which can provide 45,000 tons a year.

“To date, salt workers have harvested nearly 13,000 tonnes of salt, but only 10 percent has been sold,” Tri calculated.

According to farmers, to make a living from salt, farmers need to sell salt no lower than 1,000 dong per kilogram in a stable outlet. Now Ba Tri’s salt cannot be processed and factories refuse to purchase it because they say the salt contains impurities and is not salty enough. As a result, the salt can only be used for making fish sauce.

Farmer Nguyen Xuan Hay complained that the Government has allowed salt to be imported, which has made the life of farmers more difficult. “Many people have shifted to do other businesses. But I am 70 years old, what else can I do?” he questioned.

Chieu from Ninh Diem People’s Committee also observed that farmers are puzzled by the salt imports – hundreds of thousands of tons. She said that if the situation cannot be improved, the number of impoverished households will increase.

VietNamNet/SGTT

Tags: Vietnam salt