Turning acid soil where rice won't grow into a guava orchard: a VietGAP conversion near Ho Chi Minh City

On the southern edge of Ho Chi Minh City, there are paddies of acid sulfate soil (locally called 'phèn' = soil acidified by aluminum and sulfur content) where, in the rainy season, water did not drain and rice did not properly ripen. The farm of Nguyen Ngoc Binh, who switched that land to a guava orchard, has come to ship about 1.5 tonnes a month steadily and to hold VietGAP certification and OCOP 3-star. The case of turning land where rice will not grow into a certified fruit-tree producing area is material for Japanese buyers thinking about how to source Vietnamese guava to gauge a producing area's 'basic fitness.'

Turning soil where rice will not ripen into a certified guava orchard

The stage is Quy Duc district, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Binh Chanh county). The land of a little over 9,000 square meters that Mr. Binh's family holds could not shed phèn (acid sulfate) year-round, and rice yields did not rise. What he planted there were the 'Ngoc Binh queen guava (ổi nữ hoàng)' and the pear guava (ổi lê), and it now even figures among the city's 2023 outstanding agricultural products.

The selling point is the fruit's quality. Using only cow manure and naturally fermented grass as fertilizer, he suppresses insects with biological control rather than chemical pesticides. The fruit is large with a smooth skin, a small seed-bearing core, and thick, crunchy, sweet flesh. The cultivation process itself is aligned with VietGAP (Vietnam's good agricultural practices) standards, and the queen-guava product line born from it received OCOP 3-star certification. VietGAP is certification of the orchard and process, and OCOP is an evaluation of the product.

Fixed pricing, a supply-demand control on the producer side

Mr. Binh's farm does not match its prices to the ups and downs of the market. It holds the queen guava at a fixed 25,000 dong per kg and the pear guava at 20,000 dong. Even if guava prices collapse in a bumper year he does not lower the price, nor does he jack it up when supply is tight. This policy is something a producing area can do because it holds buyers with the quality of its fruit and certification. The thinking on pricing differs from open-field produce that is tossed about by the market.

The revenue scale is easiest to see through the figures the local paper reported. The table below lines up the original text's statements as is, and it is reasonable to read monthly sales and monthly profit as peak-season levels when shipments are on, and the annual figure as an average amount (because the monthly and annual figures do not line up by simple multiplication, treat them as a guide).

The yen conversion is calculated at 1 yen = about 175 VND (rough estimate as of July 2026). The original amounts are Vietnamese-dong-denominated.

Farmers switching thin paddies to fruit trees are increasing in many places

The move to earn by switching low-yielding fields to fruit trees or processing is not limited to Mr. Binh. In producing areas with poorly draining acid soils, like the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, there are more scenes where it pays better to shift to high-value crops than to keep growing rice. In fact, there is a case of turning acid-sulfate-soil rice farming into the black by managing it with numbers (Why An Giang's rice farming on acid soil turned a profit after giving up reliance on experience), and in the same 'way of dealing with phèn,' both the road of refining rice and the road of switching to fruit trees are running.

With guava itself too, in Dak Lak in the Central Highlands a 2-hectare farm processes, on top of fresh fruit, even leaf tea and fruit liquor in-house, producing annual sales of 3.6 billion dong (poor-sandy-soil guava earning VND 3.6 billion in annual sales, the blueprint of a Dak Lak farmer). The two differ in scale and distribution, but narrow the axis of comparison to 'whether certified,' 'the thickness of processing-oriented supply,' and 'the degree of vertical integration' and the difference becomes clear. Dak Lak holds processing in-house as vertical integration to absorb market swings, while Mr. Binh's farm stays fresh-fruit-only and builds stability through certification and fixed pricing. The starting point from poor land is the same, and the design beyond that diverges.

Certification and near-urban location make supply easy to read

What Japanese buyers can read from this farm is, more than guava as an item itself, the fact that the 'supply quality' of Vietnamese guava has risen. VietGAP is a standard for recording production processes and managing pesticides and hygiene, covering the part first questioned in export negotiations. OCOP 3-star is a local-government-level quality certification that assures traceability and shipment stability. The location close to central Ho Chi Minh City and to the port and airport shortens the lead time from harvest to collection, making freshness and volume easier to forecast.

That producing areas, even small ones, obtain certification and run on fixed pricing means that for buyers the option of 'a supplier with small quality variation even in small lots' expands. Separate from the way of buying large volumes of open-field market produce, it becomes easier to build sourcing that draws only the needed amount from certified producing areas. This also runs in the same direction as moves to connect reduced-pesticide, record-keeping producing areas to exports to Japan (The day farmers become crop doctors: Quang Ninh's reduced-pesticide rice opens sourcing to Japan).

In Japanese procurement, view 'fresh' and 'processed' separately

What must be calmly pinned down here is Japan's import rules. The Vietnamese fruit for which Japan has cleared fresh-fruit import stays limited to items such as white- and red-flesh dragon fruit, cat chu mango, lychee, and longan. Guava is a host of fruit flies and, as of July 2026, is not among the items cleared for fresh import. In other words, under the current quarantine system, sourcing that places fresh guava like Mr. Binh's directly on Japanese supermarket shelves cannot be done.

The realistic entry point is processed goods. Among frozen puree, juice and concentrated juice, dried guava, and guava-leaf tea, products that have gone through heating or sufficient processing to become something other than fresh fruit tend to fall outside the fresh-fruit plant-quarantine framework. However, the handling of dried and frozen goods changes with the form, and even if plant quarantine is cleared, the Food Sanitation Act applies separately. In fact, Vietnamese lychee and some processed goods have had import-time monitoring inspections imposed. It is not that processed goods are unconditionally easy. Even so, if you are to pursue guava demand in Japan, sourcing as a processing raw material is the axis to start from. A certified small-scale orchard, even if it does not itself ride on fresh export, can well become a candidate as a supply source of processing raw material. Whether the farm supplying the raw material manages quality with VietGAP or OCOP works in explaining the processed good's safety and traceability to buyers.

A producing area pinned down now is a head start after clearance

Fresh clearance is realized only after the exporting country arranges producing-area registration, a control system, and processing facilities and holds repeated talks with the Japanese side. Dragon fruit, lychee, and longan were all cleared at the end of such accumulation. That orchards obtaining certification and keeping records are increasing on the Vietnamese side also means the base of producing areas ready to supply immediately is growing, should fresh guava clearance move in the future. Build a relationship in the processing-raw-material trade now, and you can get a head start on fresh sourcing after clearance.

Producing-area data and key sourcing points

Conclusion: enter via processing raw material and pin down the producing area early

What Mr. Binh's farm shows is a real example that even acid soil where rice will not grow can be reorganized into a fruit-tree producing area through variety choice, cultivation management, and certification. What the Japanese procurement side can move on right now is the processed-goods side rather than fresh, but the fact that VietGAP- and OCOP-managed small-lot producing areas are increasing is worth noting as a sign that Vietnamese guava supply is shifting from volume to quality. As a next move, we recommend confirming with exporters handling guava processed goods the specific certification status and traceability of the raw-material orchards, and listing certified orchards like Mr. Binh's as producing-area candidates with an eye to fresh clearance. Farmers with the power to turn poor land into certified producing areas will be the starting point of the next sourcing route.

References: Báo Dân Việt / For the import-clearance status of Vietnamese fresh fruit, see Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Plant Protection Station (quarantine conditions by item)、JETRO, Import Regulations for Fruit and Vegetables (Vietnam) .