As avocado season arrives, mobile avocado buyers become increasingly busy traveling across avocado-growing areas in Gia Lai Province. These mobile traders harvest, negotiate, and haul hundreds of kilograms of fruit daily, linking small farmers to national markets while earning vital seasonal income.
Avocado trees are commonly intercropped in the gardens of many households in Gia Lai Province, providing a significant source of revenue. During the harvest season, mobile buyers make their way into individual orchards to purchase avocados directly from growers.
Having spent years in the trade, these buyers travel on motorbikes fitted with two large baskets on either side. Their vehicles carry long-handled mesh and fabric picking nets, familiar tools used to harvest avocados from tall trees. After negotiating prices with orchard owners, they often take on the harvesting themselves, picking the fruit and transporting it to collection points.
From around 7 a.m., mobile buyers begin weaving through orchards in search of supplies. They travel dozens of kilometers across multiple localities, hoping to collect enough fruit to meet their targets. By midday, the two baskets on their motorbikes are often filled with avocados and transported to collection centers for resale to agents.
The Ham Rong slope area in Pleiku, formerly a city, has long been home to many of Gia Lai’s avocado purchasing agencies. After being bought from growers, avocados are brought to collection points for sorting and packing before being shipped to markets in provinces and cities across the country.
Over several days of field observations, we witnessed a steady stream of motorbikes loaded with avocados arriving from orchards at collection points. Agents remained constantly busy weighing, sorting and loading the fruit. After unloading their baskets, buyers had only enough time for a short break, quickly drinking a bottle of water and wiping sweat from their sun-darkened faces before starting their engines again and continuing their collection rounds during the peak of the harvest season.
During the ripe avocado season, each mobile buyer can collect hundreds of kilograms of avocados per day, including various varieties. This seasonal work generates an income of about VND300,000 to VND500,000 per day, providing an additional source of earnings for many local workers.
