Lychee farmers fill up a section of almost 1km along the road on Monday morning.
The lychee harvest season in Luc Ngan starts at the end of May and lasts for more than a month. According to Bac Giang’s Department of Industry and Trade, farmers have sold more than 35,000 tons of the fruit so far this season.
A farmer gets a ticket with the price for the lychees.
Currently, traders pay farmers VND10,000-35,000 (US$1.5) per kilo of lychees depending on the product’s quality.
A farmer named Nguyen prepares to get his lychees weighed by traders.
Nguyen said his family has more than 200 lychee trees and started to harvest the fruits a week ago. Every day, they pick around 200 kilos of lychees.
For a week now, Nguyen and other family members work from midnight to early the next morning to pick the fruits, pack them and transport them to traders.
They must do so to prevent the scorching sun from spoiling the quality of the fruits, which would affect the selling price.
“The sunshine will make the fruit lose water and not look fresh,” he said.
Staff hired by traders classify, weigh, and load the lychees.
They are paid VND700,000-VND1 million per day.
Traders will then send lychees to southern localities, including Ho Chi Minh City, and nearby provinces such as Hanoi.
Bac Giang’s lychees are also exported but for foreign markets, traders must visit the farms and choose the fruits themselves.
Men lift a motorbike as it falls on one side, with all the lychees on the back seat.
Fruits that are damaged can only be sold at half the normal price.
Traders pay for farmers.
Home to the biggest lychee farming area in the north, Luc Ngan has 17,000 hectares of lychee farms this year, expected to yield 98,000 tons in total.
For this season, 88 farm areas meet the criteria to export the fruit to Australia, China, the EU, Japan, the United States and Thailand.
A section of National Highway 31 is jammed with farmers distributing lychees on motorbikes.
