- Location: Đắk Rơ Wa Commune, Kon Tum, Vietnam
- Strength: Buys back products at fair, guaranteed prices
- Main products: Rice and sticky rice, beans and seeds, and vegetables
Careful farming: Mountain Farmers and Xuân Lộc
Looking for farmers for An Nông, I’ve had a few stops I still think about. This time it’s two names under one household: Mountain Farmers and Xuân Lộc.
Careful farming at Mountain Farmers: rice, sticky rice, beans
Mountain Farmers is the “root” of both gardens, the place where beans, rice and vegetables start out.
In many places, farmers are stuck figuring out where to sell, prices swing, and pressure to raise output pushes them to chase yield. Here, Ms. Hoàng Ly and her team chose to move slower. They work with local growers to keep native seed varieties, supply suitable seed, set a planting calendar, and are often out in the fields guiding and checking each stage of cultivation.
The whole group commits to no herbicides, to keeping chemical use to a minimum, and to holding onto the traditional growing methods of this part of Kon Tum. This approach takes more labor and yields less. In exchange, the product keeps its plain, rustic character from the start, and farmers have something to lean on for doing it right.
From the rice and beans, the garden also makes dried bún (rice vermicelli), dried phở (flat rice noodles) and rice flour. These fit a busy household: keep them in the kitchen, and a home-cooked meal is a few minutes away.
Xuân Lộc: wellness and beauty from the same clean produce
If Mountain Farmers is the rice and the beans, Xuân Lộc is what gets made from them next.
I like to joke that Xuân Lộc’s teas are for “an easy stomach, an easy mind.” But joking aside, it’s worth saying plainly: these are foods, not medicine. Rice-bean tea, lemongrass tea, and nut milk are things you drink as part of a self-care routine — don’t expect them to replace medication or a doctor’s advice.
Careful farming also shows up in grade-2 and grade-3 produce
This is the part that moves me most, and the reason I trust how they work.
Grade-2 and grade-3 produce is usually sold off cheap elsewhere, just to use it up. Not here. Every week, it’s cooked into rice and porridge sent to hospitals for people in difficult circumstances. On weekends, pots of porridge, bún and phở are prepared for ethnic-minority children in the surrounding villages.
They don’t publicize any of this. I only found out by going around and asking each farming family myself.
Why An Nông chose these two gardens
Our approach is simple: we only offer what we’d use ourselves. So before introducing any product, I always ask: where does it come from, who made it, how was it made, and what does it give back to the farmer?
With Mountain Farmers and Xuân Lộc, the answers are fairly clear. Growers are paid a fair price, native seed varieties are kept alive, and the land is treated with a lighter hand. That’s also where An Nông’s “AN” comes from: security for the farmer, for the land, for the person using the product, and for the community.
#AnNong #VietnameseTraditional
