A cool spring afternoon, the hill of young cinnamon trees rustles in strong winds.

Taking a rest from clearing grass on the hill, Dang Thi Dien, 30, of Dao ethnic minority group takes her smart phone out. Instead of wiping for hot news as usual, she opens the newly-installed application to type in what she has done today as a diary in her account page.

The application, “QGS Electronic Diary”, has been recently introduced to over 700 families joining the organic cinnamon planting project implemented by the Viet Nam Staraniseed Cassia Manufacturing And Exporting Joint Stock Company (Vina Samex JSC) supported by GREAT Program of Australian government.

“It’s easy to use with many images to choose rather than words,” Diện said. “With the app, I just update the situation of my cinnamon trees, what I have done in the day and so on.

“If the trees get worms, we can take photos of the worms, update in the diary and ask the technicians what we should do to treat the worms,” Diện said. “We can get the advice very soon from experts.”
She further said other young people of her age have found almost no difficulties in using the app but to older people, it may be a problem.

According to Tran Thi Vui, who is responsible for the company’s PR task, the app [a kind of electronic diary for agricultural households] is more challenging for elder people, who rarely use smart phones.
“Presently, our technicians update cinnamon status for elder people,” she said. “In order to ease the process, the company is asking the Digital Verifying Technology Joint Stock Company, who supplied the app, to add more oral orders functions in the app so that people can use it by speaking.” Vui said all the households are now using both soft diary and hard diary notebooks as usual.

“Each family has an account to update cinnamon information on, through which our experts can get the information without taking field trips to the area,” Vui said. “We can consult farmers online what they should do to treat some disease, or remind them to harvest when it’s time. So it’s quite convenient for both farmers and the company.”

Dien said her family has just joined the project for two years. She should wait for few more years to harvest the first generation of organic cinnamon.

“Planting in organic way requires more labour like clearing grass, picking worms, we have to do by hands rather than using any chemicals,” she said. “But the company pledged to buy our product at higher price than the cinnamon planted in normal way. So we are happy with that future.”

Cinnamon trees cared in organic way grow stronger than the ones planted using chemicals, she admitted.

The company buy dry cinnamon at the price of between VNĐ50,000 and 90,000 (US$2.2-3.9) per kilogramme depending on the quality while the fresh cinnamon is bought at between VNĐ25,000 and 27,000 per kilo. For products planted by organic process, the price is 15-20 per cent higher than normal product.

Nguyen Ngoc Minh, head of the company’s Project Department, said GREAT has been actively supported the company to establish long-term cinnamon material area in the district.
“We have hosted various training sessions on planting organic cinnamon as well as gender equalisation awareness for locals,” he said. “The farmers are happy with the project and have joined the sessions in mass number.”

Local cinnamon products have got quality standard certificates from markets of Europe, the US, Japan and South Korea, so we ensure buying local products in long term at stable price, he said.
Minh said the company has received valuable financial and consultant supports from GREAT and other non-governmental organisations.

If we are lucky enough, we still need such supports, especially by GREAT, as we do not simply do business for profit but also care of improving life for ethnic minority groups and the locality, he said.
Minh admitted the communicating process with locals is still hindered by language barrier.

“Most of local farmers are not fluent in Kinh majority language, so in such training sessions, we need interpreters to make sure they understand what we train,” he said.

More than 740 families in two communes of Nam Tha and Liem Phu of the district are joining the organic cinnamon planting project in total area of over 1,250ha.

Van Gia Lam, chairman of Nam Tha Commune’s People’s Committee, said support by such foreign bodies like GREAT is crucial to the locality’s development.

“Local people have planted cinnamon for many years,” he said. “Yet the company and GREAT’s project ensures market for the products, which also helps secure stable income for locals. Organic planting also helps improve local environment. We have spared no efforts to facilitate such meaningful projects.”