Collectivising agriculture proved to be a disaster, so in 1986 the Communist Party carried out a U-turn - placing a big bet, at the same time, on coffee. Coffee production then grew by 20%-30% every year in the 1990s. The industry now employs about 2.6 million people, with beans grown on half a million smallholdings of two to three acres each. This has helped transform the Vietnamese economy. In 1994 some 60% of Vietnamese lived under the poverty line, now less than 10% do. The expansion of coffee has also had downsides, however. Agricultural activity of any kind holds hidden dangers in Vietnam, because of the huge numbers of unexploded ordnance remaining in the ground after the Vietnam War. In one province, Quang Tri, 83% of fields are thought to contain bombs. Environmentalists also warn that catastrophe is looming. WWF estimates that 40,000 square miles of forest have been cut down since 1973, some of it for coffee farms, and experts say much of the land used for coffee cultivation is steadily being exhausted. Vietnamese farmers are using too much water and fertiliser, says Dr Dave DHaeze, a Belgian soil expert. Theres this traditional belief that you need to do that and nobody has really been trained on how to produce coffee, he says. We want to bring Vietnamese coffee culture to the world. It isnt going to be easy but in the next year we want to compete with the big brands like Starbucks, he says. If we can take on and win over the US market we can conquer the whole world.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 23:31:04 +0000
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