Last April, a friend of SAHU visited a salt field in Southern Vietnam and exclaimed, "It's so heartbreaking." Some salt fields were dug up to grow seaweed when the price of seaweed was higher than salt. Now that the price of seaweed has dropped, the land is abandoned and can no longer be used to make salt. Then people dug up the mountain, put pieces of plastic tarps to contain the salt water, and spread the tarps to make salt crystallization ponds. The pure white salt grains are still produced, but there is a whole story behind it. don't know what to say
The salt fields in Vietnam stretch from the Central region to the South. The solar salt ecosystem is truly a valuable ecosystem. Not only does it produce salt grains with the least fuel consumption, but it also has many benefits for the environment, biodiversity and people's lives. If there is any method of making salt that is the most sustainable and environmentally friendly, it is the solar salt method. Why is there now only 8,000 hectares of salt-making land left out of 14,000 hectares (including the North)? (according to Deputy Minister Tran Thanh Nam). This question is a common concern of the government and traditional sea salt producers like SAHU.
In the early days of selling salt, SAHU often looked at the salt fields in France. They were so similar to those in Vietnam, but people didn't even bother to spread tarps. They kept the ground, produced coarse salt and salt flowers, and earned more than 20 million euros a year. They strictly preserved the salt-making area, just like we preserve national parks. SAHU wished that we could do the same in Vietnam. There are many reasons why sea salt is not as important in Vietnam as it is in European countries. Therefore, it is difficult to try to sell a type of sea salt that is considered high-class, but few customers can distinguish the taste of the salt.
However, one way or another, what SAHU wants is for us to accept sea salt in terms of health, taste and benefits for our ecosystem and environment (and also culture and history). Holding a grain of salt in our hands, in the past, we never thought about where it came from, whether its journey passed through shrimp, fish, seaweed, wind and bird sounds, what benefits it brought to the environment or just dry grains of salt that looked white and beautiful but behind it was the struggle with natural resources and the waste of fuel and waste?
Consumers have great power, you are the factor that affects the existence of traditional salt fields because the sea salt products from these salt fields, the best way is to enter the family meal. And they can only exist when we are willing to see their value not only as a grain of salt but also as a huge ecosystem behind, something that we will not see when we only look at each grain of salt but it is always present. Hopefully, we can feel their energy because they are the crystallization of many beautiful things, including the hearts and efforts of those who love their homeland and love the traditional salt profession.