Owners of plantations in southern Vietnam are plagued by Storm Paluk, the very first typhoon of 2019, with flowers meant for Lunar New Year (Tet) badly destroyed by heavy rainstorms.

There are not enough statistics to tell, but the locally-grown flower output prepared for Tet could be reduced by between 40 percent and 50 percent, according to farmers.

This is not to mention many localities are suffering heavy losses, with thousands of hectares of rice fields flooded, hundreds of houses unroofed, and boats sunk offshore.

Flower villages in southern Vietnam are under huge damage.

Right now at Sa Dec, the ‘flower hub’ in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap, many farmers are facing the risk of losing it all if the high humidity condition is about to continue.

“Roses are very sensitive to the weather. It makes me worry that this year output is likely to turn to zero”, said Hung, a farmer.

Nguyen Thanh Hung, deputy director of the Dong Thap Hi-tech Agricultural Application Center, said most of the flower farmers in the village produce Tet flowers outside so they cannot avoid the influence of the weather. "This murky weather with high humidity makes the trees very easy to rot. We should grow flowers in a greenhouse to be less dependent on the weather,” Hung recommended.

Tran Kim Nga, a flower grower in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho, explained that due to this prolonged rain, over 1,000 pots of Taiwanese chrysanthemum flower are facing risk of slow blooming, yellow leaves and diseases.

“This has sent yields to drop about 50 percent, no matter of how much plant protection medicines were used,” she told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper while cutting early chrysanthemum buds.

Having the same opinion with Nga, Doan Huu Bon, director of Binh An Cooperative affirmed that the loss rate is about 40 percent and most of affected farmers will find it hard to avoid losses.

But flower farmers in the Mekong Delta could breathe a sigh of relief as Storm Paluk on Friday entered southern Thailand.

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