Fruits and Vegetables in Vietnam - International Food Policy ...

Producers generally do not rent storage space and rely on their own capacity to store produce. On
average, producers have 2.3 tons of storage capacity in their homes, ranging from 1 tons of capacity for
dragon fruit and pineapple producers to 3 tons of capacity for litchi producers.
The average storage period was 86 days, ranging from a high of 141 days for litchi producers to just
3 days for a large banana producer from Phu Tho province. The amount stored averaged 0.86 tons, ranging
from 0.29 tons of longan to 5 tons of bananas. This represented an average of 78 percent of available
capacity. No producer indicated that any produce suffered from spoilage during storage.
7.2 Post harvest activities
The most common type of post-harvesting activity carried out by producers is grading (76 percent of
producers) and drying (14 percent of producers). As Table 3-33 indicates, the majority of grading is done for
fruit produce, while washing and ripening are carried out for vegetable produce. While substantial amounts
of produce are “processed” further, this processing mainly involves grading of fruits or vegetables before
being sold as fresh produce. For producers of banana, dragon fruit, mandarin, mango and pineapple, the only
post-harvest processing carried out is grading. There are also large numbers of orange and cabbage producers
who are also carrying out grading activities (96.3 percent and 82 percent of producers respectively).
Longan, litchi and tomato producers are the only ones carrying out drying and preserving, which are
seen as “traditional” post-harvest activities. Over 98 percent of litchi producers and 42 percent of longan
producers are involved in drying fruit before sale. Tomato producers are mainly involved in ripening
produce before sale (76 percent of producers) while a small number are involved in preserving produce (23
of producers). Bagging operations, seen as a value-added process for retail sale, are carried out mainly by
cabbage and tomato producers (15 percent and 8 percent of producers, respectively).
Almost all growers (96 percent) carry out their post-harvest activities on the farm rather than at
cooperatives or centralized processing facilities. The only district-level post-harvest activities were washing
carrots and ripening cucumbers.
The amount of product that is processed after harvest is a large proportion of the total crop. This
ranges from 62 percent for litchi to 100 percent for banana, carrots and mandarins. Table 3-33 indicates that
losses from post-harvesting are generally quite small, averaging 1.4 percent of total processed product. The
exception to this is the post-harvest losses incurred by tomato producers, who average 7.3 percent losses on
their preserving and ripening activities.
Table 3-33 shows that, overall, the post-harvest cost is 266,000 dong/tonne. This ranges from a low
of 12,500 dong/tonne for cucumber producers to a high of 1.713 million dong/tonne for longan producers.
The cost of post-harvest processing reflects the different activities carried out by producers. Those producers
who carry out grading and washing activities generally have costs averaging 20,000 – 40,000 dong/tonne
while longan and litchi producers, who carry out drying activities, average costs of 1.7 million and 395,000
dong/tonne respectively.
Chapter 3. Commercial growers of fruits and vegetables Page 3-15