Vietnam aims to shift the coffee industry towards more sustainable growth, so that it would ensure stable production and increase export revenue, Vietnam News Agency reported on Sunday.
Government officials and industry executives at the 2023 Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Festival, held in the central highland province of Dak Lak this week, said Vietnam’s coffee industry would turn to green and sustainable transition to address its environmental and economic vulnerability.
Vietnam’s coffee sector has to adapt quickly to a future when the suitable climate for coffee production changes, said Nguyen Tuan Ha, deputy chairman of the provincial people’s committee of Dak Lak.
In an effort to maintain its position as a coffee powerhouse, Vietnam is focused on growing high-quality and environment-friendly coffee, building credible and traceable sustainable coffee supply chains, and further investing in modern coffee processing and better farmer livelihoods, Ha said.
Vietnam aims to review plantation areas, putting a cap on nationwide coffee cultivation at 600,000 hectares, according to the government’s sustainable coffee plan with vision towards 2030.
The Southeast Asian country’s coffee farming currently covers an estimated area of 710,000 hectares, data released at the festival showed.
Intercropping of coffee and other crops, along with optimizing fertilizer use and applying water-saving irrigation methods, has proved to be viable strategies for Vietnam’s coffee sector, said industry experts.
As the coffee consumption process includes an appreciation of its history, Vietnam should explore the opportunities of its unique coffee culture to transform the sector into “a multi-valued industry”, helping local farmers earn a larger and fairer share of profit in value chains, Le Minh Hoan, minister of agriculture and rural development, said.
Vietnam aims to achieve 6 billion U.S. dollars in export revenue by 2030. Last year, it exported 1.7 million tons of coffee, earning a record high of 3.9 billion U.S. dollars, data from the agriculture ministry showed.
Vietnam is the world’s second largest coffee producer and exporter after Brazil, as well as the largest Robusta supplier with production on a steady rise from some 78,000 tons in 1990 to about 1.8 million tons in the 2021-2022 season.
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