In Hanoi and other Vietnamese cities at this time of year, potted kumquat trees fastened to motorbike seats dodge and weave through traffic in a haze of orange. Families buy them as symbols of luck and good fortune for the new Lunar New Year, which started on Wednesday.
This year a typhoon and extreme heat dented the harvest, scrambling prices for kumquats and other ornamental plants associated with the holiday, which is known as Tet in Vietnam. Some people bought smaller kumquats or switched to less expensive options, like orchids or persimmon branches.
Ornamental plant farmers are now stuck with unsold inventory after months of price swings in the market. In the case of kumquats, wholesale prices initially rose because of limited supply. Then they cratered for a lack of demand linked to consumer jitters and a perception that this year’s golf-ball-size kumquat fruits do not look very pretty.
“We’re all in a sad mood,” Nguyen Thi Hoa, 39, who grows kumquat trees near Hanoi’s Red River, said of the ornamental plant farmers in her corner of the capital. Unsold kumquat trees stood beside her, each selling for about 600,000 Vietnamese dong, or $24. That is at least 40 percent less than in a typical year.
It would be hard to overstate how important the Lunar New Year is to Vietnamese people — imagine Christmas and Thanksgiving combined — or how ubiquitous kumquat trees are across Vietnam and parts of neighboring China as the holiday approaches. The squat citrus plants are a regular presence in living rooms, shops and office lobbies.
In September, Typhoon Yagi flooded farmland and damaged crops across northern Vietnam during a critical growing period for kumquats and other ornamental staples of Lunar New Year. Ms. Hoa said floodwaters from the storm killed about half of the 500 kumquat trees she had planted.
Higher-than-average temperatures and a shortage of rainfall last year also hurt the harvest, said Pham Thi Thanh Nga, the director of Vietnam’s Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change.
The extreme weather translated into steep price swings at the markets and sidewalk stalls where people buy Lunar New Year kumquats, peach blossoms and bananas. The lack of rain also made kumquat trees weaker and their fruit less attractive, farmers say.
“This tree is much less beautiful than what I expected,” said Nguyen Thi Nguyet, 39, as she inspected a potted kumquat at a Lunar New Year market in Hanoi this week. The fruits looked smaller and thinner than usual.
The tree still cost the equivalent of about $80, or roughly double her budget. So Ms. Nguyet, who works at the Education Department in Hanoi, instead paid about $13 for a bouquet of orchids imported from China.
Nguyen Thi Loan, a retired teacher, was stunned to see the price on a bunch of 21 green bananas lying on a plastic tarp: about $28. She usually pays a little over $1.
“These are the most expensive bananas I have ever touched in my life,” Ms. Loan, 64, said as flowers and pork sausages poked out of her shopping bag. Bananas, the go-to fruit for placing on family altars to honor ancestors, are usually the cheapest item to buy for the holiday, but this year they are more expensive than meat, she added.
“It’s unheard-of,” she said. “It’s crazy!”
The banana vendor, Tran Van Huy, 50, didn’t budge on the price. So Ms. Loan bought one bunch instead of the three she had planned for. She said she would add other fruit to the family altar this year.
The price sensitivity to ornamental plants is partly a function of general economic malaise in Vietnam, Ngo Tri Long, a retired Finance Ministry official, told the news site VnExpress this week. Even though Vietnam’s economy grew by about 7 percent last year, Mr. Long said that it hadn’t fully recovered from the pandemic and natural disasters.
Consumers can adapt to a volatile market for kumquats and other ornamentals by changing what they buy, but farmers are still dealing with the effects.
One kumquat farmer on the outskirts of Hanoi, Nguyen Duc Vinh, said he had lost 40 percent of 3,000 trees to flooding and high winds from Typhoon Yagi. That was especially painful because it happened at a time of year when wholesale traders start inspecting kumquat farms and making orders for Lunar New Year.
As the holiday approached, Mr. Vinh, 51, raised his wholesale kumquat prices by about 50 percent to cover his labor costs, he said. But traders didn’t bite so he reduced them to the normal price of about $10.
“This craft has become more precarious than ever,” he said.
Nguyen Van Loi, a kumquat vendor in Hanoi who bought 1,000 trees from Mr. Vinh, said on Monday that he still about had 400 left to sell, even after cutting the price by half.
“One of the worst years in my 10 years of trading,” said Mr. Loi, 44, as his wife watered kumquat trees to keep them fresh.
A couple on a motorbike stopped to check the tree prices, then drove off without buying anything.
Judson Jones contributed reporting.
