From a start-up capital of 2 million VND, after 6 years of growing straw mushrooms, Linh and her husband now have a farm with 48 growers, earning over 2 million VND every day from selling mushrooms. .
After graduating from university with a major in agricultural engineering in Ho Chi Minh City, Mr. and Mrs. Lam Thai Duong (35 years old) and Ms. Le Ho Thuy Linh (33 years old) stayed in the city to start a business, but both times they failed. failure.
“When we first graduated in 2013, we were very confident and gathered capital to make clean vegetables with the model of growing and caring for organic vegetables at home for customers. We expected to spend no capital and quickly make a profit, but then we lost money. “I can’t make up for anything, the enthusiasm of youth was slapped by reality,” Ms. Linh happily recalled the memory of her unsuccessful start-up.
Having failed in “episode 1”, Ms. Linh and her husband worked as hired laborers to earn capital to start a business in “episode 2”. The young couple chose to work in the agricultural sector to gain experience.
Having gathered a little capital, Mr. Duong and Ms. Linh continued their dream of clean vegetables for office workers in Ho Chi Minh City. The plan had not been implemented for long when they had to give up because no one was buying the vegetables they sold. When the saved money was spent, the two had to accept the “second slap” of the startup process.
Feeling unlucky with the city, Ms. Linh decided to return to her hometown in the border commune of Binh Phu (Tan Hong, Dong Thap). Mr. Duong said “fish follow the river, husbands follow their wives” so he also came home.
Not giving up on their dream of clean agriculture, Linh and her husband asked her grandparents for 25 rolls of straw to compost organic mushrooms. After a few turbulences, luckily this time they got results.
At first, afraid of failure, Mr. Duong did not dare to compost all the straw at once. He took 11 rolls of straw, followed the recipe and then stacked them on a bamboo shelf to compost.
“According to the books, there are mushrooms picked every half a month, but a few days later, we still don’t see any mushrooms. The couple was so sad, they dumped all the straw into the garden. Unexpectedly, a few days later, the pile of straw grew bristling with mushrooms,” she said. Linh said.
Following the wrong recipe but getting results, Mr. Duong learned from experience and did not build a shelf but built a hut to incubate the remaining 14 rolls of straw. This time the young couple collected nearly 40kg of mushrooms, a profit of more than 2 million VND.
With little capital, Ms. Linh divided it into 2, half took Mr. Duong to buy iron for welding shelves, the other half she took to buy straw to produce a new crop. Because the lessons in books were not really effective when growing mushrooms in the countryside, they rode together on their motorbikes and went around to mushroom farms in the West to learn more.
“There are farmers who are more meticulous than engineers. They fully record the daily parameters of the farm. Seeing that we really want to learn, many people do not hesitate to give us their notebooks, their experiences That experience was very valuable,” Ms. Linh said.
Working seriously, the results are gradually becoming clear, the number of mushroom shelves of Ms. Linh and her husband continues to increase exponentially. Then from the mushroom shelf, Mr. Duong built a greenhouse to grow mushrooms. One house, then 2 houses, then 24 houses.
“Straw mushrooms look like that, but they are very difficult to care for and are sensitive to living conditions. If they are hot they will die, if they are cold they will die, if they are too dry they will die, but if they are too wet they will spoil,” Ms. Linh shared.
For stable and effective production, at the beginning of this year, Ms. Linh and her husband decided to invest a large amount of capital and build a 1,500 square meter solid house to grow mushrooms. The house is divided into 48 rooms, fully equipped with growing racks, electric lights, fans, heaters, and mist sprayers.
In order to have goods delivered to customers every day, every day the young couple rotates into only 3 rooms. At the same time, three other growing rooms had harvested mushrooms. Mastering techniques, Mr. Duong confidently controls output and product quality.
Mushrooms can be picked after 15 days of growing, and after 3 days of harvesting, the first batch is over. Depending on the amount of goods customers need, Ms. Linh can wait to “eat” the second batch of mushrooms to reduce costs, or discard the old embryos for the new crop to increase output.
“The straw brought in must be detoxified with lime, pasteurized with high-temperature steam before production. If running at full capacity, the farm can produce over 30 tons of mushrooms each year.
Currently I am looking for more output, only half of the growing rooms are operational. At 3:00 a.m., workers start picking mushrooms to deliver them to customers on time at the morning market. Regularly every day the farm earns over 2 million VND,” Ms. Linh said.
Currently, Linh and her husband’s finished products are only sold in markets within a radius of about 10km. Ms. Linh is researching making products from mushrooms such as fish sauce and freeze-dried mushrooms to have more output and create added value.
Ms. Ngo Thi Thuy Trang (47 years old, small trader at the central market of Tan Hong district) said that straw mushrooms are a traditional food of local people and can be eaten by vegetarians, so the consumption is quite large and stable. . Every day, a small trader like her can sell several dozen kilograms of mushrooms for 100,000 VND/kg.
“Ms. Linh’s mushrooms have a safe and clear growing process, so I can offer them for sale to customers more easily and at a higher price than the average, customers also like to buy them more,” Ms. Trang shared.
Tan Hong district leaders highly appreciated Linh and her husband’s mushroom growing model because it is suitable for local conditions. The district has a policy of supporting farms in building brands and registering for certification of typical local products.
($1=24,000 VND)
Photo,Video: Internet (Vinlove.net)