Back to English Comments Industries – October 3, 2018 | 12:02 pm GMT+7 Farmers’ hopes once climbed high on pepper vines in the Central Highlands; today, they are entangled in debt and misery. As the monsoon season ended in the Central Highlands, Lac packed up his belongings and embarked on a southward journey. Leaving behind his grass-covered fields, a tractor that has not been touched for months and a couple of goats that no one wanted to buy, he would work as a security guard for a restaurant in Saigon. Lac has to undertake this journey to save his house from being seized by the bank. His family has been unable to pay their bank loan’s interest for months as the pepper vines that they’d invested all their money in now stand shriveled. Vui, on the other hand, has remained at home in Chu Puh District. She shares Lac’s fate. The pepper vines that had borne the hopes and expectations of her family have now buried her in debt. Unlike Lac, she has stayed behind to wait for the fruits of her last gamble: over 100 pepper vines in her farm have survived the monsoon season, and her family has poured all their remaining money and effort into them. However, the end of the monsoon season can also mean a return of plant diseases, and Vui has already spotted a few of her pepper leaves turning yellow. This can eventually spread to the entire vine, and engulf the garden as… [Read full story]
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