2,300 seedlings to four households: can Lao Cai's 2 hectares of Thai-type custard apple sell?

In the mountains of northern Vietnam, the planting of a fruit whose name is rarely heard in Japanese raw-material procurement has begun. In three settlements of Bao Nhai commune, Lao Cai province, 2,300 suitable seedlings of the Thai-type custard apple "na Hoang Hau" have been distributed to 4 poor and near-poor households and have entered cultivation on 2 ha in total. The agriculture-and-environment paper (Bao Nong nghiep va Moi truong) reported it on 22 September 2026.

Two ha does not reach the unit of a business deal. What is worth reading is rather the stage. During the few years in which a new item rises as an origin, the planting density and the way prices are set harden and become hard to move later. The yen conversion is an approximation at 1 yen = about 163.6 VND as of 25 September 2026 (exchangerate-api.com).

2,300 seedlings to 4 households: what began on 2 ha in Lao Cai

The targets are the three settlements of Coi Sa, Nam Chi and Trung Do

Planting began in mid-2026. In these three settlements, seedlings of na Hoang Hau, also called na Thai, passed into farmers' hands. The project sits within the national target program on the socio-economic development of ethnic-minority and mountainous areas, doubling as a poverty measure.

The project owner (chu dau tu) is the commune's general service center. Nguyen Trung Thanh, the center's deputy director, explains that it is being carried out strictly as a trial and that it is at the stage of considering expansion measures after evaluating the economic effect.

A household that didn't grow with mulberry and silkworms took on over 800 trees

The family of Lam Van Truong in Trung Do settlement planted mulberry and raised silkworms but did not reach the results they hoped for. Registering at the project's launch, they received over 800 trees, more than a third of the total 2,300 distributed (the ratio is the editorial team's arithmetic). What concerns Mr. Truong, he says, is not the seedlings but the planting and care techniques suited to his own household's conditions.

How far is the estimate of 7 tonnes of yield and a 35,000-VND unit price usable?

Just planted, there is still no actual yield

The source article qualifies the character of the numbers. Stating that, because there is no harvest yet, there is no basis to evaluate actual per-area yield, it then sets, as a theoretical value based on the technical process, 7 tonnes per ha a year, and at an average selling price of 35,000 VND/kg (about 214 yen) puts the annual value of 1 ha at 245 million VND (about 1.5 million yen). The expected income after subtracting investment costs is roughly 70 million VND (about 430,000 yen), and it qualifies that the actual effect will swing depending on each household.

The multiplication checks out. 7,000 kg x 35,000 VND is 245 million VND, as in the original. In Vietnamese, the period in "35.000 dong" is a digit separator and the comma in "0,14ha" is a decimal point, the reverse of Japanese. The "trieu" in "245 trieu" means a million and "ty" means a billion; mix them up and the magnitude moves by three digits.

The gap between gross income of 245 million VND and take-home of 70 million VND

The difference of 175 million VND (about 1.07 million yen) is not broken down. In Nghe An, discussed below, the cost of 1 ha (650 trees) is 45 million VND, which cannot be explained by initial land preparation alone, so it is treated as undetermined. Nor can it be read whether the 35,000-VND unit price is a farmgate handover, a collector's buying price, or an over-the-counter price at the local market. Because lining up prices at different stages to derive a multiple overstates an origin's capability, this piece does not present a multiple either.

In the leading Nghe An and Tra Vinh, how much does it actually sell for?

Nghe An fetches 80,000 VND at the garden, more than double the native variety

The same paper interviewed Cao Thanh Vinh of Nghia Hieu commune, Nghe An province, in 2022. It is a case of pulling up 1 ha of old orange trees and switching half to the native variety and half to the Thai type. Nearly three years from planting, 2 tonnes; that year, 4.5 tonnes on 1 ha. The prices were 35,000 VND/kg for the native variety and 80,000 VND (about 489 yen) for the Thai type.

This 80,000 VND has a clear transaction stage. The article says that every day, or once every 2-3 days, a collector comes to the garden, selects and harvests, weighs, and pays the garden owner. It is a farmgate price. The native variety's 35,000 VND is at the same stage, so the comparison of 'more than double' holds only between these two. Most of the fruit is 0.5-0.8 kg each. The cost of seedlings, land preparation, fertilizer, irrigation and pest control for 1 ha (650 trees) is 45 million VND (about 280,000 yen), and that year's sales came to over 250 million VND (about 1.53 million yen) for the two varieties combined.

Tra Vinh's dune land yields 20 tonnes in two crops a year, but the outlet is not settled

Tran Thanh Tai of Hiep Hoa commune, Cau Ngang district, Tra Vinh province, started na Thai from 180 trees on 0.14 ha of dune land (dat giong cat) with poor water retention and insufficient irrigation water in the dry season. With 30-cm raised mounds, 3-m spacing, drainage channels and drip irrigation, he has reached an average of 20 tonnes/ha over two crops a year. The selling price (as of 2024) is 30,000-50,000 VND/kg (about 180-310 yen).

However, Tran Tung, deputy head of the province's Cultivation and Plant Protection Sub-department, says that Tra Vinh still has no stable outlet for na Thai and that it is sold mainly through middlemen. Na Hoang Hau is not a new item in the Mekong Delta, and what made Mr. Tai the first was that he leaned toward an organic method in Phieu settlement, he says.

Because theoretical values and actual values, and single-cropping and two crops a year, are mixed in, they cannot be used to compare which is better. Even for the same variety, per-area yield spreads from 4.5 to 20 tonnes, and the 7 tonnes that Bao Nhai set is on the modest side.

What to confirm when viewing it as a raw material for drying and puree

In which process does being large-fruited with few seeds pay off?

The reason na Hoang Hau can be seen as a Japanese processing raw material lies in the trait of large fruit with few seeds. However, this trait is not in the 22 September source article. A separate piece in the same paper reports that the fruit of Mr. Tai in Tra Vinh is over 500 g each with few seeds, and it is correct to treat this as the record of a specific field.

In a process that strains the pulp for use, being large-fruited with few seeds pays off in the edible-portion ratio. Mr. Tai says the dune-land fruit has thin skin and is not watery, and how that thinness shows up in transport is something to measure in practice. The case of Thanh Hoa aligning mango on 30 ha- as it shows, aligning specifications requires area and a collection unit first, and the gap from 2 ha becomes the challenge itself.

A first harvest on 2 ha does not reach the unit of a business deal

Even at the theoretical 7 tonnes/ha, that is 14 tonnes a year on 2 ha, and as a dried product the weight drops further. It is not a volume for continuous trade. What a buyer can do now is not place an order but secure a position that gets the first call when the origin expands. The supplier's management level pays off before volume. Nafoods' move to integrate its core system- a processor that has organized raw-material-lot tracking like that can serve as a catch basin even for a small volume from a new origin.

The time a new item in the northern mountains needs to become an origin

Whether it expands is decided by the first harvest of the 4 households

By deputy director Thanh's account, the 2 ha is a trial for tracking and evaluating the economic effect, the participating households' results will be the basis for calculating expansion, and over the long term it eyes the formation of a dedicated cultivation zone. The time axis can be picked up from leading cases. In Tra Vinh, fruit set can be controlled on 16-month-old trees; in Nghe An, 2 tonnes nearly three years from planting, growing to 4.5 tonnes the next year. Bao Nhai's first bearing is end of 2027 at the earliest, and a yield that can be spoken of as an origin is from 2028 onward.

Planting density and channel-building are decided at the current stage

Planting 2,300 trees on 2 ha comes to 1,150 trees per ha (the editorial team's arithmetic). That is denser than Nghe An's 650 trees/ha and close to Tra Vinh's 3-m spacing (about 1,100 trees/ha). Dense planting makes it easy to earn early yields but increases the labor of pruning and pollination. Mr. Vinh in Nghe An makes it a daily routine to collect pollen in the morning and pollinate other flowers in the evening, and who will bear that labor a few years out comes as a set with the density decision.

The move of Son La farmers starting to seek sales channels by smartphone- as it shows, northern mountain origins have begun to try ways of selling that are not solely through collectors. If high-unit-price domestic buyers grow first, price negotiation for export becomes disadvantageous by that much.

The one move available now is not sounding out an order but measuring the variety in practice. Na Hoang Hau is already commercially grown in the Mekong Delta, and if you reach an origin that is shipping, you can measure the edible-portion ratio, sugar content, ripening speed, and the color and viscosity after straining on site, or ask a processor for a trial batch. If you bring fresh fruit into Japan, confirm the plant-quarantine requirements with the competent authority first. Going to see the first harvest with those figures in hand, you can present terms the moment it comes online.

Sources referenced

• Bao Nong nghiep va Moi truong, "Bao Nhai supports residents' na Hoang Hau cultivation," 22 September 2026
• Same, "Plant na Thai and you can harvest money" (Nghe An province), 6 September 2022
• Same, "The pioneer who brought na Thai to dune land" (Tra Vinh province), 4 November 2024
• Same (video), "Success in growing na Hoang Hau, few seeds and over 500 g each," 24 July 2023
• ExchangeRate-API (1 yen = about 163.6 VND / 25 September 2026)