Digital farming logs come to an organic guava orchard

A tech-driven orchard

At Au Lau Ward in Lao Cai Province, the Yen Bai Agricultural and Forestry Products Trading and Processing Cooperative has begun demonstrating the tangible benefits of pairing organic guava farming with digital record-keeping.

Walking among rows of recently planted guava trees just beginning to take root, Nguyen Thi Hoa, the cooperative's director, paused to check on the young plants before pulling out her phone to demonstrate the FAEFARM app, the platform now central to the cooperative's production management.

A few taps on the screen are all it takes to pull up the complete cultivation history of any given plot: planting dates, fertilizer types, care schedules and projected harvest windows. The app also integrates weather forecasting, a pesticide reference database, and a product sales channel.

Hoa said the shift from paper to digital has been transformative. Previously, production logs were kept in handwritten notebooks, prone to being lost or left incomplete. Now, all data is entered directly on a smartphone, making records easier to manage, verify and trace.

"The digital journal lets us track the entire growing and care process," Hoa said. "What fertilizers were applied, how the trees were tended, quarantine periods, it's all recorded clearly. The system even sends reminders for care schedules and harvest timing, which is incredibly convenient."

The move to digital record-keeping also positions the cooperative to meet the increasingly stringent traceability requirements attached to OCOP-certified products, organic produce and goods destined for supermarket and specialty food store shelves.

Organic farming as environmental stewardship

The cooperative currently tends more than 600 guava trees across roughly one hectare. Of those, 400 were funded directly by the cooperative, while approximately 200 were supplied through a forest and farm development program administered via the provincial Farmers' Association, under a green, circular and climate-adaptive production model.

Every tree is cared for under a rigorous organic protocol. Rather than synthetic fertilizers or chemical pesticides, the cooperative relies on chicken manure, microbial compost and biological preparations to condition the soil and protect its crops.

The FAEFARM platform reinforces this approach by enabling quick lookups of approved pesticides, correct dosages and mandatory withdrawal periods, a critical function as residue testing standards continue to tighten across Viet Nam's agricultural supply chain.

Weather data integrated into the app, including temperature, rainfall and humidity forecasts, allows the cooperative to schedule fertilization, maintenance and harvesting more precisely, reducing weather-related losses and improving overall productivity.

Beyond operational efficiency, the cooperative is pursuing a broader philosophical shift toward green agriculture. Each stage of production is designed to minimize environmental impact, protect local ecosystems and deliver safe food to consumers.

One standout feature of the model is its deliberate preservation of the natural ecosystem within the orchard. The cooperative uses no herbicides, allowing ground cover vegetation to remain beneath the trees. That living mulch retains soil moisture, limits erosion and supports populations of beneficial microorganisms.

Beneath the guava canopy, the cooperative also grows stevia and fish mint as raw ingredients for its processed product lines, a strategy that maximizes land use while generating additional revenue from the same acreage.

Pest control follows the same ecological logic: natural predators are deployed in place of chemical sprays, maintaining biological balance and avoiding environmental contamination.

"We farm organically, no chemical pesticides, only biological preparations," Hoa said. "No herbicides either. We keep the ground cover intact. Every part of the ecosystem here has to stay in balance."

To conserve water and cut labor costs, the cooperative has also invested in a modern irrigation system capable of covering large areas quickly while delivering precisely the moisture levels guava trees require, significantly reducing water consumption and minimizing runoff.

The cooperative's own assessment of the results is cautiously optimistic. Growers are managing their operations with greater confidence, input costs have fallen, and the cooperative is better equipped to meet market demands for traceable, certified-quality produce.

With consumers increasingly focused on food safety and supply chain transparency, the integration of organic farming practices with digital tools is widely seen as a natural fit for modern agriculture. The model not only produces safer food, it actively contributes to environmental protection and the long-term goal of a sustainable green agricultural sector. If results hold steady, the cooperative plans to scale the model further.