Near Noi Bai, Hanoi, a farmer who replaced lean paddies with poor rice yields with greenhouses and grows a Korean-origin white grape called milk grape is achieving results. According to a report carried by the local agriculture journal Nong nghiep Moi truong on July 25, 2026, Ta Quoc Hoang, born in 1986, invested about 1 billion dong to convert paddies into a greenhouse grape orchard, and annual revenue exceeded 300 million dong. Greenhouse grapes in the north become a case that foretells how far the combination of variety introduction and paddy conversion can be reproduced.
Growing a Korean-origin white grape in a greenhouse
Hoang converted 8 sao (one sao in northern Vietnam is 360 square meters) of lean paddy into a plastic-greenhouse grape orchard equipped with automatic irrigation. What he introduced is a Korean-origin white grape, a variety locally nicknamed milk grape for its milky-white skin. He uses organic fertilizer and biological pesticides, and copes with pests such as the cotton leafworm with insect-proof netting. The lean paddies of the northern delta (đất lúa bạc màu) are land where rice does not raise yields and profitability is hard to secure. The choice to concentrate capital here, control the environment with roof and irrigation, and switch to high-unit-price fruit stands on the opposite thinking from widening area to make a commodity product.
1 billion dong on 8 sao of paddy, annual revenue over 300 million dong
Yield per plant has grown from an initial 10-15 kg to 20-25 kg, and with one harvest a year he is said to earn income of 40-50 million dong per sao.
| Item | Figure | Yen equivalent (1 yen ≈ 170 VND) |
|---|---|---|
| Initial investment | About 1 billion dong | About 5.88 million yen |
| Annual sales | more than 300 million dong | Over about 1.76 million yen |
| Income per sao | 40-50 million dong | About 235,000-294,000 yen |
| Yield per plant | Initial 10-15 kg to 20-25 kg | — |
| Cultivated area | 8 sao (1 sao = 360 square meters) | — |
All based on the same Nong nghiep Moi truong article. The yen conversion is an approximation at a reference rate and swings with the exchange rate and transaction conditions.
The wall to scaling up is not the variety but cash flow
Hoang himself places the next challenge on funds for scaling up. Working capital is especially needed at the year-end (October-December) timing of soil improvement and seedling ordering, and he pins hopes on preferential financing through the Bank for Social Policies. Local government also implements this financing support, and a framework to back individual farmers' capital investment is in motion. Rather than the variety itself, cash flow and soil building are the bottleneck to scaling. The north has a cold period in winter and much land is ill-suited to open-field fruit trees, but an environment-controlled greenhouse can dodge the constraint. What Hoang's 8 sao shows is a northern fruit-tree solution in which even a small area can cancel out the climate disadvantage through capital investment.
A superior foreign variety has begun to take root in Vietnam's paddies
For Vietnamese fresh grapes to line up on Japan's store shelves there is the wall of a quarantine agreement, so it is not realistic for the time being. Even so, this case has two meanings. First, that the technology and management of raising high-sugar grapes in a greenhouse near northern Hanoi have begun to stand at the level of an individual farmer. Second, that in the form of introducing a Korean variety, a superior foreign variety is being brought in as a set with Vietnam's paddy conversion. For Japanese buyers, it is worth following on both the intellectual-property angle of how home-country varieties such as Shine Muscat are handled in Vietnam, and the angle of a future supply area for processing and frozen raw material.
The same paddy conversion near Hanoi, the article dealing with the price of replacing lean paddies with greenhouses organized the investment amount and payback. The move of foreign-variety grapes bearing fruit is not limited to the north, Thanh Hoa, where seedlings were received from a Korean employer and Ha Tinh, where Shine Muscat bore fruit on a hill set side by side, the outline becomes visible of Vietnam quietly shifting from a fruit-importing country to a country cultivating superior varieties. For Japan's high-sugar grapes, this has the two faces of market expansion and, at the same time, variety outflow and the rise of competing production areas.
What to follow is the variety and the carriers of the Korean white grape
At this stage it is not a counterparty to move on for direct fresh sourcing. What to watch is the pedigree of the cultivated variety (the lineage of the Korean-origin white variety), the stability of sugar content and appearance, and the appetite to develop into processing and freezing. Because individual farmers' cash flow is the wall to scaling, whether a move emerges for companies or cooperatives to put in capital and consolidate area becomes the watershed for standing up as a production area. You also want to gather information early on the intellectual-property risk where unauthorized cultivation of a Japanese variety is involved. The north is closer to the Japanese market than the south, and there is also something to watch on the logistics side when arranging air or refrigerated transport. Start by following which variety takes root where, and who puts in capital to consolidate area.
Sources
Nong nghiep Moi truong, "Thuần hóa nho ngoại trên đất lúa bạc màu" (July 25, 2026)
