Last week a group of journalists and a TV crew of the national Vietnamese television (VTV-1) came to visit the globalgap certified contract farmers of The Fruit Republic.
While numerous articles in the Vietnamese media have reported of the failure of various programs to help the Vietnamese fruit smallholders to grow out of poverty through globalgap certification, a positive exception has been the case of The Fruit Republic. After pomelo, orange and lime farmers joined the contract farming program of The Fruit Republic, incomes of farmers increase with 50% because TFR commits itself to buy year round all fruit of its contract farmers. In addition its extension program is very successful to help the farmers to:
a) obtain higher yields
b) increase the percentage of class 1 fruits
c) obtain more production during the low season.
This was all documented and broadcasted by VTV-1 to 88 million Vietnamese.
