HCM City (VNS/VNA) - A pepper glut in the CentralHighlands as more and more farmers switched to the crop lured by the earlierhigh profits from the spice has caused prices to collapse and threatens tobankrupt many of them.

Huge expansion of the area under pepperand output have made regional master plans for the spice redundant and localauthorities helpless, and threaten the well-being of many local farmers.

In the region which has been known asthe largest pepper producer in the country, Dak Lak, Dak Nong and Gia Laiprovinces, the main pepper-growing areas, have 68,600 hectares under the cropnow. The master plan had envisaged them having 18,000ha in 2020.

With the local weather and soil beingideal for pepper, the average yield here is 3.15 tonnes per hectare and thespice has always fetched high incomes for the locals.

But the glut this year has sent pricescrashing by half to just 100,000 VND (4.5 USD) per kilogramme. As a result, tensof thousands of farming households are in debt, with many even going bankrupt.

Cu Kuin, Chu Se and Chu Puh districtsin Gia Lai province have for long been famous for their pepper. Due to the veryhigh profits in recent years, many farmers here have switched from other plantsto pepper.

Pham Hong Nhat of Hamlet 3, Nam NDjang commune, Cu Kuin district, became rich over the years thanks to pepper butfaces difficulties this year.

“My family harvested 40 tonnes ofpepper and I did not want to sell it because the price was so low, but I had tosell 20 tonnes for day-to-day expenses.”

Nguyen Huu Tam, deputy chairman of theChu Se district Pepper Association, was quoted as saying in Nhan Dan (People's)newspaper: “Many farmers borrowed money at high interest rates. They willsurely be in debt because of low pepper prices.”

The glut came about because farmersswitched en masse to pepper without support plans and ignoring all warningsfrom authorities.

It has rendered local agriculturalmaster plans irrelevant and unleashed plant diseases due to massive fertiliseruse and failure to nourish land.

According to a recent survey by the VietnamPepper Association, Gia Lai has over 6,100ha of disease-hit land while theyields in Chu Se and Chu Puh districts have declined by 25-30 percent.

The association said local authoritiesare unable to control either the area under pepper or the quality of seeds usedfor planting. Low-quality pepper seeds are sold everywhere, resulting inincreasingly lower yields.

But there is no in-depth research intothe diseases or incubation of pepper projects, it said.

According to the Steering Committee for the Central Highlands, in the first six months of this year there were over1,700 violations of the Forest Law, including 323 cases involving destructionof 122ha of forest to grow pepper plants.

To improve the situation, the CentralHighlands Agricultural, Forestry Science and Technology Institute has organisedagricultural encouragement forums, undertaken technology transfer, providedtechnical training and set up pilot pepper farming models.

It hopes these activities would appriselocal farmers and authorities about the situation and teach them how tosustainably grow pepper.

“It is necessary to build a ‘Vietnamesepepper’ national brand name and more investment is needed to build pepper into astrong industry,” Nguyen Tri Ngoc, head of the Ministry of Agriculture andRural Development’s Crops Production Department told a recent seminar on pepperdevelopment.-VNA