Vietnam - Local coffee growers in hot water

Vietnam’s lucrative coffee crop is under threat from parasites and an overabundance of old trees.

World Bank agricultural experts Vikas Choudhary, Jan Van Hilten and Roy Parizat said the parasitic plant nematode and the rising numbers of old coffee trees were causing serious problems for all of Vietnam’s coffee plantations.

“There is no remedy to solve nematode problems which cause shrinking coffee output and quality. Meanwhile, $800 million would be needed to replace over 100,000 hectares of old coffee trees with new ones. This is an immediate hazard as the financial problem remains a big question for farmers now,” Parizat said.

Vu Quoc Tuan, head of communications section at Nestle Vietnam, which currently purchases around 25 per cent of Vietnam’s total coffee output annually, told VIR that nematode problems were attacking coffee trees in all major coffee producing countries, such as Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam.

“The disease means that Vietnam will lose about 15 per cent of its coffee output annually and by 2015, the output will be slashed by half, from about 1.3 million tonnes last year,” Tuan said.

Nguyen Van Thao, a coffee farmer in central highland Lam Dong province’s Lam Ha district, said hundreds of hectares of coffee in his locality were home to nematode problems and an overabundance of old trees.

“The output has come down an average of 15 per cent since last year due to the disease and old trees. We have no cash to renew the trees,” Thao said.

The World Bank calculated the cost of re-planting one hectare of coffee at $8,000. According to Tuan, 90 per cent of projects aimed at planting new coffee trees in Vietnam have failed due to the presence of the parasite. If farmers wanted to replace old trees with new ones without nematode being present, theoretically, the roots of old trees or nematode-hit trees had to be removed, then the soil had to be left uncultivated for two or three years before re-planting.

“But how can farmers earn their living in that period? If they use the soil to plant other trees to earn a living, it will take five years for them to resume coffee plantation on that soil,” Tuan said, referring to the over 560,000 coffee-planting households nationwide.

According to the Vietnam Cocoa and Coffee Association, Vietnam currently has 548,200ha under coffee cultivation. Of this 514,400ha of trees including over 100,000ha planted with trees aged 25–30 years needed to be replaced by new trees. Vietnam’s total coffee output was 1.3 million tonnes last year with the country ranking first and second globally in exporting robusta and arabica coffee, respectively.

The World Bank reported that in 2007, pests caused losses of $112 million to Vietnam’s coffee sector. In addition to disease, coffee trees have also been hit by tough weather conditions in recent years. For example, in Dak Lak province which makes up 90 per cent of Vietnam’s total coffee area, a drought caused losses totalling $57 million (24,000 tonnes) in the 1994–1995 season, losses of $92 million (60,000 tonnes) in 1998, and losses of more than $92 million (100,000 tonnes) in 2005.

Thanh Tung | vir.com.vn

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