Bui Van Hanh from Dak Glong District in Dak Nong Province said his family had recently grown around 300 durian trees, replacing pepper and coffee.
According to Hanh, it is more difficult to take care of durians, but prices had sharply increased, and China had started importing durians since early September.
Bui Tin, chairman of Krong Bac Organic Agriculture Cooperative, said local farmers previously earned around VND100 million (USD4,032) a year from one hectare of coffee and pepper, meanwhile, the figure is VND500-700 million for the same area of durian. In the coming time, the co-operative will remove unproductive old coffee trees to grow durians.
According to the General Statistics Office, since 2010, there has been a five-fold increase in land devoted to durian cultivation in Vietnam, an increase to 90,000ha by 2022. Over the past two years alone, durian growing has increased by 20,000 hectares. The country sees annual durian productivity of 1.3 million tonnes.
Dang Phuc Nguyen, General Secretary of the Vietnam Fruit and Vegetables Association, said that durian prices had seen a great improvement since being licensed for export to China.
Nguyen, however, added that only durian that met Chinese phytosanitary protocol requirements would be allowed to be exported to China.
Nguyen Nhu Cuong, Deputy Director of Plant Cultivation Department, said that Vietnam was home to 90,000 hectares of durian, but only a small amount fulfilled Chinese import criteria.
To avoid oversupply, such as seen with pepper, people were advised not to just swap over to growing durians.
In 2017, many households flocked to plant pepper, when it was sold at VND200,000 per kilo. However, just a short time later, the price dropped to VND15,000-20,000 per kilo, causing great losses for many people, Cuong noted.
People should instead combine the plantation of durians with coffee or pepper to mitigate risks.