Tea plants have contributed to improving the living conditions of Tan Thanh people

Along with the expansion of citrus fruit area, tea plant is still recognized by the people of Tan Thanh Commune (Luong Son) as a key crop, contributing to the stability of their lives. At present, the whole commune maintains a total area of 55 hectares of tea plants, of which fresh tea leaves are 50.5 hectares, the area of old tea leaves is 4.5 hectares. The area of tea plants is mainly concentrated in My Tan and Tan Thanh villages.

85% of households in My Tan village, Tan Thanh commune (Luong Son) invested in tea drying machine to ensure the processing of tea products.

Tea is an industrial plant that has a product lifespan of over 20 years with high production efficiency. Therefore, in recent years, although the locality has been doing garden renovation, they still keep the area of tea plants. In addition, to implement the project on the development of raw material tea areas of the province, Tan Thanh was identified as one of the key communes of Luong Son district to build Lac Thuy - Luong Son tea area, forming the oriented production area of raw materials of about 900 hectares.

Taking us to visit the tea material area of My Tan village, Ms. Pham Thi Nguyet, the Secretary of the village Party Communist Branch confirmed: tea is still the key crop of My Tan village. There are 170 households but 120 households out of them plant teas with the total area of ​​21.6 hectares. Currently, there are 3 tea varieties in tea plantations, that are Phu Ho tea, shan tea, mid-land tea. These are the traditional tea varieties, which have been planted in the village since 1968. These varieties are suitable for weather conditions and soil here. To be convenient for the processing, about 85% of tea growing households in the village have equipped tea drying machines. The advantages of tea plants are easy to care, the local people have experience in growing and taking care of tea, so the yield can reach at about 10 tons / hectare. The output of My Tan tea is quite stable with the prices of fresh tea leaves at 6,000 VND / kg; Type 1 tea is priced at 90,000 VND / kg, Type 2 tea is priced at 70,000 VND / kg. Thanks to tea trees, the average income per capita of the village in 2018 is 22 million VND, the rate of poor households is reduced to 2%.

At present, in order to raise the value of tea quality, Tan Thanh commune is taking care of investing in improving quality and output, paying attention to changing the method of tea production and processing tea from traditional one to VietGAP standardized production.