Even in a phase where durian farm-gate prices are falling, Le Van Tuong of the Tan Son area in Krong Nang District, Dak Lak Province, sold out a 1-ha field at 62,000 dong per kg (about 350 yen at about 175 VND per yen). The share of Grade A exceeded 80%. He chose his buyer not by price but by uniform quality, and for importers who put "specification stability" first in procurement for Japan, the point worth picking up lies in the process management of this one field.
Tuong's 1 ha: 110 Dona-variety trees, 25 tonnes, an estimated VND 1.55 billion in revenue
Tuong's field is made up of about 110 Dona-variety trees, with the 2026 harvest expected at about 25 tonnes. Calculated at a unit price of 62,000 dong, revenue reaches VND 1.55 billion (about 8.86 million yen). In the same area, if the fruit varies, it is rejected at grading and the average unit price falls. That Tuong's field could put out 80% Grade A underpins this figure.
Even within a single durian tree, the fullness of the fruit changes with the fruiting position and sunlight, and judging the right harvest time is difficult. To make the whole field uniform in specification takes a design that applies care step by step, from the flower-bud stage through the tree's recovery after harvest. Tuong did not leave this to an outsourced manual but switched inputs to match the tree's vigor stage.
An integrated design that changes inputs by stage, from post-harvest recovery to fruit fattening
Tuong adopted the technical standards of Nong Hoa Xanh and manages through from the post-harvest tree-vigor recovery stage to the fruit-growing stage. What he used, in addition to Con Cuu organic fertilizer, were materials such as Biofuvat for post-harvest recovery and Biofruit for the stage of fattening the fruit, a setup that changes inputs depending on which phase the tree is in.
The point is that he positions the period right after harvest not as a "time to rest" but as a "time to prepare next year's quality." Because he fully restores the tree, worn down the previous year, with organic matter before moving on to flower buds and fruiting, the fruit swells uniformly and variation at harvest shrinks. Compared with the conventional type that pushes the tree by making chemical fertilizer take effect all at once, the difference shows in the output figure of the Grade A rate.
Durian's Grade A and Grade B are split by weight, shape, and flesh fullness, and by appearance such as deformation and chipped spines. If nutrients are uneven in just one part of the field, lower grades mix in even on the same tree, and the average unit price after grading easily falls by thousands of dong per kg. Changing inputs by stage is a process for holding down this "variation within the field," not simply a matter of switching the fertilizer brand to a premium one. Only when accompanied by an on-the-ground eye that reads which phase the tree is in and judges whether to concentrate inputs on recovery, flower buds, or fruit swelling does a figure like 80% Grade A emerge.
Duc, with 12 ha and 1,600 trees, doubled his yield and raised the unit price by 10,000 dong
In the same Tan Son area, Phung Van Duc, who manages 12 ha and about 1,600 trees in their sixth year, estimates roughly doubling his 2026 yield to about 120 tonnes from about 60 tonnes the previous year. He is also negotiating a buying price raised by 10,000 dong per kg, from 50,000 dong the previous year to 60,000 dong (about 343 yen). Even with an area scale differing more than tenfold, the idea of looking at the tree's condition and matching inputs is common to both.
| Farmer / production area | Area | Scale | 2026 yield (estimate) | Unit price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Le Van Tuong | 1ha | About 110 trees / Dona variety | About 25 tonnes | 62,000 dong, over 80% Grade A |
| Phung Van Duc | 12ha | About 1,600 trees / 6th year | About 120 tonnes (about 60 tonnes the previous year) | 60,000 dong (50,000 the previous year) |
| Dak Lak Province overall | Over 41,000 ha | Fruiting trees about 30,000 ha | About 500,000 tonnes | ― |
Prices are in dong as stated in the original. Yen conversion is an estimate at a guide of about 175 VND per yen.
The move by individual farmers to hold the process field by field is spreading beyond Dak Lak. With technicians visiting fields to direct fertilizing and pruning, a case of doubling yield through contract production and and how farmers earn by managing the balance sheet of each individual tree lined up, Tuong's fertilizing design turns out to be one cross-section of the same current of "measuring the field and correcting it."
What Japanese importers ask is not price but "will the Grade A rate hold next year too"
Japan's durian imports are centered on frozen product, with a strong flow of processing into peeled flesh and puree that goes into confectionery, baking, and beverages. Because the yield of frozen and processed product ties directly to the ripeness and flesh fullness of the raw material, what buyers really want is not the lowest price but a field whose Grade A rate is reproduced the next season too. A process like Tuong's, prepared from post-harvest recovery, is exactly the part that directly creates this reproducibility, and it tends to be valued more than a one-off bumper crop. The more a buyer premises diverting to processing, the more heavily they weigh "whether Grade A holds up even in a poor year" over the appearance of a good year.
What the procurement side should confirm on the ground is not the fruit's appearance that year but the trail of the process: whether fertilizing records remain by stage, and with what materials and how much the tree was restored after harvest. Chasing only farm-gate pricing lands you a production area whose quality collapses the next year. A farmer who can put the process into words and show it has a firm footing even in price negotiations premised on multi-year trading.
In practice, securing just one such field will not stabilize supply. To fill the lots the Japanese side wants, you need to lock up, across a district, fields that run the same fertilizing design. If farmers who manage with the same thinking, like Tuong's 1 ha and Duc's 12 ha, are close by despite the difference in scale, raw material with a readable grade composition is easier to bundle. Conversely, procurement that grabs cheap fields on the fly in a bumper year rebounds as cost at the processing stage, as swings in frozen yield.
The next dividing line is whether quality can be spread to the production area rather than ending as an individual's craft
The achievements of Tuong and Duc depend, for now, on each field's management capability. Seen across the production area, the gap between fields with and without a fertilizing design shows up directly as a gap in Grade A rate and unit price. Dak Lak Province holds over 41,000 ha, with about 30,000 ha of fruiting trees, and its 2026 output is projected at about 500,000 tonnes; but unless it can bundle this volume at "uniform quality," the average unit price will be swept along by the downward pressure of farm-gate price cuts.
A clue to this is, without hoarding the technique, building a production area where farmers share cultivation know-how with one another If an individual's fertilizing design can be reduced to a district's standard process, variation in the Grade A rate shrinks at the production-area level. For buyers, whether they can move from procurement that chases a specific single field to procurement that guarantees specification across the whole production area becomes next season's selection criterion.
For the near-term practice, we will want to make the following the starting points of on-the-ground confirmation.
- Whether records of the materials and timing used for post-harvest tree-vigor recovery remain for each field
- Whether the Grade A rate is stable not in a single year but across multiple seasons
- Whether the variety (Dona, etc.), tree age, and number of fruiting trees match between the declaration and the field
- Whether the fertilizing design is in a form that can be shared and reproduced across the district, not held in an individual farmer's memory
The more prices fall in a given year, the wider the gap grows between fields that can put out uniform quality and those that cannot. What Tuong's 1 ha showed was the order of preparing next year's specification from the day after harvest ends, rather than waiting for a bumper crop. What procurement should watch is less this year's fruit itself than whether the farmer can run that order.
