From January to June, the dan diem (salt makers) work in the salt fields in long shifts of 7 to 8 hours. The workers here are unloading their baskets of salt on the huge salt mounds at the side of the salt fields.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The salt farms of Hon Khoi are run by small, family-run cooperatives, where men and women harvesters are paid equally – a rarity in labor-intensive industries in Southeast Asia.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The women deftly carry two bamboo baskets, each holding10 kilograms of salt, balanced over their shoulders.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
Women wear traditional hats and cover their mouth with handkerchiefs as protection from the scorching tropical sun. Most of women use hand gloves and rubber boots to avoid the corrosive effect of the saline crystals on their skin.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
Men rake in the salt crystals with wide-mouthed shovels, heaping them into small mounds from which the women will load the salt into baskets or wheelbarrows.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The earnings of a salt farmer have sharply decreased in recent years. The payout is directly related to production volume, and shifting weather patterns due to climate change have severely hampered salt production.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
Salt farming is intense, hard work with an unstable income. The farmers have to take up other means of livelihood, like paddy or shrimp farming, in the non-harvest season to sustain their families.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Vietnamese government had laid out a 15-year plan in 2014 to introduce new technologies to counter the effects of climate change. But as of 2021, salt harvesting is still following the traditional method of natural evaporation of seawater in the salt fields.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The average earnings of a salt farmer range between 100,000 VND ($4.31) to 150,000 VND ($6.47) per day, just enough to maintain a subsistence livelihood.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
In spite of the low and unstable income, an air of cheeriness and camaraderie is palpable everywhere in the expansive white fields.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
At the end of a working day, farmers cover the salt mound to protect it from rain. The quality of salt has suffered in recent years due to unusually frequent rains in the high harvesting season of March to June.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
A farmer halts work early in the afternoon and prepares to leave as dark rain clouds cover the sky over the salt plains of Hon Khoi.
Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
In the latter half of the 19th century, south-central Vietnam was introduced to salt farming. Within a few decades, it became such a flourishing business that the mineral was called “white gold,” and a lot of fisherfolk changed their profession to become salt farmers.
One of the largest producers of Vietnamese salt is the Hon Khoi peninsula, around 40 kilometers north of the popular beach town of Nha Trang. This is the home of the dan diem community, who have been harvesting salt for generations in the area’s expansive salt pans. Hon Khoi produces a third of Vietnam’s salt. The 30,000 tons of annual production is used for domestic consumption and also exported to Japan and the United States.
In recent years, however, salt harvesting in Hon Khoi has been deeply affected by a drastic change in climate. The dry months from January to June have been the traditional salt harvesting season. When seawater gathered in the pools in the salt fields is evaporated by the scorching summer sun, the salt farmers move in to rake out the saline crystals. But in recent years, early arrivals of the wet season and shifting rain patterns have disrupted the salt harvest, impacting both production volume and quality.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also adversely affected the industry. It has resulted in a sharp dip in salt prices, from $0.50 per kilogram to just $0.26, primarily because the demand for salt in Vietnam’s fishing industry, which is the traditional buyer of domestic salt for fish sauce and seafood products, has hit an all-time low.
