K’Dinh, an 80-year-old K'ho man in Loc Nam commune, Bao Lam district, told VOV that chronic hunger and poverty have become a story of the past. Living conditions have greatly improved and every villager lives comfortably.

K’Dinh recalled, “The once narrow, muddy, bumpy roads are now wide and smooth. Our economic condition and income have improved. Every household has a means of transportation. Some even have a car. Houses are more solidly built. There is no longer any poverty and everyone is doing business. Most families have an annual income of several thousand dollars."

The Government has invested millions of dollars in Loc Nam over the past decade to improve the power grid, roads, schools, medical stations, economic infrastructure, and rural areas.

Thatched houses have been replaced with more solid houses, and local life has improved.

The number of K'ho households in the commune has increased from a few hundreds to more than 3,400 with 13,000 people, 30% of them ethnic minorities.

Thanks to fertile land suitable for growing high-profit plants like tea, coffee, durian, mangosteen, and macadamia, Loc Nam has established stable production zones covering 5,000 ha.

It has created a number of effective production models that produce revenues of 21,000 to 42,000 USD a year. One durian farming model produced 84,000 USD in one year.

Loc Nam now has 3,400 cows, goats, and pigs, plus 34,000 poultry and water-birds.

Loc Nam has created models to connect production and consumption that have stabilized production and boosted people's incomes to an average per capita income of 1,900 USD a year. As a result, the poverty rate fell to 6% last year from 30% in 2015.

K’Chau of hamlet 3 attributes the achievement to Party and State investment. The national target programs for production development, sustainable poverty reduction, and new-style rural building have changed people’s awareness and encouraged them to apply technology to farming and building a new life.

“Our living conditions have improved a lot. In the past, we didn’t even have a bike to ride. Now every household has at least a motorbike. Some have bought cars. Our makeshift thatched houses have been replaced with cement houses. Some have even built multi-story houses. All this is a result of planting more profitable crops such as avocado and durian,” said K’Chau.

According to Vo Thien Binh, Chairman of the commune’s People's Committee, Loc Nam was recognized as a new-style rural commune in 2020.

“During the new-style rural building, establishing cooperatives for agricultural production helped people feel secure and stable, especially the ethnic minorities. Plants  used to grow naturally. Now farmers know it’s important to fertilize the plants for higher productivity, quality, and profitability. This shows the importance of changing people's perceptions," Binh noted.

In addition to improving its rural infrastructure, Loc Nam is mobilizing all its resources to develop commodity-scale farming and promote the application of high-tech in agricultural production to increase the value of cultivation area and create more models linking production and consumption.

These efforts are helping Loc Nam reach its goal of becoming an enhanced new-style rural commune by 2024.