Young people inspire 'green' startups

(PLVN) - Starting from environmentally friendly products, close to nature, many young people are now successfully starting up with green business models. They have been inspiring the younger generation to come up with "startup" ideas that bring good values ​​to the community.

Start from the simple things

In 2022, Nguyen Le Ngoc Linh (born in 1990, from Thanh Hoa) was honored to be one of 32 outstanding young people selected by the Central Committee of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union and awarded the Luong Dinh Cua Prize - this is a noble award for outstanding and outstanding "Young Farmers".

Ngoc Linh is a Tho ethnic, living and growing up in Nhu Xuan district, Thanh Hoa province. After graduating from university, Ngoc Linh has a stable job in the city with a good income and a private house for her and her husband. However, the young girl still wants to do work related to the environment, reforesting bare hills, bringing good values ​​to the community.

In early 2020, despite the advice of her family and friends, the couple brought all their savings (about 1 billion VND) back to their hometown to start a business and were labeled “crazy” by everyone around them. To prepare for her project of greening the barren hills, Ngoc Linh went into the forest every day from early morning until returning home at night. She continuously participated in agricultural groups and read a series of documents to supplement her knowledge.

In the early days, the 3 hectares of hill Linh borrowed from her parents to build the Tho forest garden model was just a bare hill, with no roads, no electricity, no water. Meanwhile, her goal was to restore the genetic resources of native plants, regenerate forests and green hills, develop the economy in conjunction with environmental protection and ecosystem protection. By 2021, with Linh's great efforts, the Tho forest garden had covered 3 hectares of bare hills with more than 100 species of trees, including: some native forest trees such as (lim, tram, chestnut, lemongrass, mac khen, doi nep). In addition, Linh planted fruit trees with high economic value (grapefruit, guava, jackfruit, sapodilla, custard apple, mango, pineapple, banana, papaya, peach); Medicinal plants (moringa, asparagus, ginger, garlic, turmeric, chrysanthemum, butterfly pea, dandelion) are completely grown organically so as not to harm humans and the natural ecosystem.

Le Ngoc Linh has devoted much effort to building the model "Ban Tho Forest Garden". (Source: Ban Tho Forest Garden)

The next inspirational startup story belongs to Mr. Nguyen Van Tuan (born in 1994), starting from fresh garlic bulbs, he has now created high-quality black garlic products, successfully establishing the Youth Cooperative 26-03 in Sub-area 4, Yen Chau town, Yen Chau district, Son La province. Thanks to his business model, Mr. Tuan has supported job creation for people in the highlands and brought consumers quality products.

Around 2017, Mr. Tuan started reading and researching black garlic. Realizing that black garlic is very good for health, he started to research and read foreign documents, especially publications on Japanese garlic fermentation technology. Due to lack of financial conditions to invest in modern machinery, Tuan chose to research and make black garlic making equipment at home from available materials. Starting with batches of garlic of only a few kilograms, then gradually increasing the capacity to 100kg, 500kg, and now 1,000kg per batch.

To produce quality batches of black garlic, Mr. Tuan had to put in a lot of effort. From selecting raw materials to processing safe and hygienic food. There were times when he had to throw away the whole batch of garlic because it did not meet the requirements or was not delicious. After many failures, he gradually gained experience in making delicious and nutritious batches of black garlic to serve customers. Mr. Tuan's black garlic products gradually gained a foothold in the market and were loved by consumers.

Another story is about Hoang Duc Manh (Dong Trieu town, Quang Ninh). After graduating from the Agricultural Academy with a degree in environmental science, he returned to his hometown with his mother, hoping to build vegetable gardens for farmers. He shared that as a person born and raised in the countryside, he understands the hardships of farmers very well, and hopes to use his knowledge to help them change their production methods and develop their economy.

When he returned to his hometown to do farming, he also encountered many difficulties. He and his mother had to convince each household about the clean agricultural production model. Many people doubted his way of doing things, but fortunately, 7 households became the first "shareholders" to contribute land with him to produce large-scale agriculture.

Since then, Hoa Phong High Quality Agricultural Service Cooperative was established, with Mr. Manh holding the position of Deputy Director. With the motto of modern agriculture, the Cooperative leased fields from local people for large-scale agricultural production, focusing on technology application to improve the quality of agricultural products.

According to Mr. Manh, the nearly 10-year journey of the cooperative has not been an easy one. In 2013, the cooperative rented 13 hectares of land from more than 150 households to grow clean vegetables and fruits. Every year, the cooperative also cultivates 500,000 cauliflower seedlings for export to Korea.

In addition, the Cooperative also produces high-quality vegetable seeds such as chrysanthemum greens, jute, Malabar spinach... with an output of 1 ton of seeds/year. This source of seeds not only helps the Cooperative to be self-sufficient in production, reduce input costs, but also partly meet the needs of farmers inside and outside the area. In 2021, the Cooperative boldly invested in a greenhouse with an area of ​​11,000m2, with a total cost of over 3 billion VND, to produce high-tech agriculture, focusing on plants such as melons, Korean melons, vegetables...

Create jobs and sustainable income for farmers

Green startup models of young people not only create good values ​​for the environment, but also bring stable income to farmers and ethnic people.

Like the Tho village garden project of the girl Ngoc Linh, after greening the bare hills, many attractive business products have been deployed. For example, seeing the positive signals from Linh's Tho village forest garden project, the Tho village cooperative was established to cooperate with beekeepers at the forest edges. She relied on natural conditions (mountainous areas are favorable for beekeeping and growing medicinal plants) and market research (lowlands are difficult to compete) to build a fermented honey processing factory with her colleagues. After bringing the main product to the market, Linh brought in a revenue of 1.5 billion VND/year and created jobs for 15 local workers.

Products from the Tho native garden such as honey, forest trees, medicinal herbs, fruits, raw materials for animal feed processing, hill chickens, etc. have been sold by Linh to markets inside and outside the province. The garden's revenue reaches about 600 million VND/year, creating regular jobs for 4 workers and 10 seasonal workers with a salary of 4 - 5 million/person/month.

In phase 2, the Tho village forest garden model focuses on exploiting cultural and tourism factors, improving infrastructure, connecting ethnic minorities to participate in cultural tourism models, contributing to restoring, preserving and promoting traditional cultural features that are at risk of being lost, while bringing a better life to local people. Up to now, Linh's Tho village forest garden project has been known and supported by many people, she has also welcomed many delegations to visit and learn about start-up experiences.

From fresh garlic cloves, Mr. Nguyen Van Tuan has created quality products and supported ethnic people to have stable jobs. (Source: Vietnam.vn)

For Mr. Nguyen Van Tuan's cooperative, after many years of stable business operations. Currently, his cooperative is a place that focuses on producing clean, safe agricultural products from local materials such as black garlic, male papaya flowers, herbal tea... with a factory scale of more than 5,000m², using modern technological lines, ensuring hygiene and consistent output quality.

Up to now, the Cooperative has achieved 4-star OCOP certification, its products are available in major supermarket chains in Vietnam and in retail stores in the province, and tourist destinations across the country. Not only creating branded products, the Cooperative also brings in billions of VND in revenue per year, creating stable jobs for dozens of local workers.

As for Hoa Phong Cooperative, Mr. Manh and his colleagues have been applying a substrate melon growing system (sowing seeds in trays in greenhouses); applying 4.0 automatic irrigation technology that can be controlled and operated via phone, recording automatic irrigation schedules; a modern 6-in-1 automatic seed sowing system with a capacity of 25,000 seedlings/hour... To expand the consumption market for the Cooperative's products, Mr. Manh has promoted cooperation activities with foreign partners for export. At the same time, he also contacted factories and processing facilities, thereby increasing the value of the agricultural products made.

In particular, Mr. Manh has implemented the project "Increasing income for small farmers using agricultural cooperative services and reducing loss rate in agricultural product distribution through cold supply chain" in the area. Initially, the project has contributed to linking production and consumption of agricultural products for farmers, developing the agricultural and rural economy.

Huong Ngoc

Source: https://baophapluat.vn/nguoi-tre-truyen-cam-hung-khoi-nghiep-xanh-post551113.html