Coffee area not to be expanded: Way to boost competitiveness

Old and stunted coffee area should be focused on improvement

In Dong Nai, right the 2000s backwards, at one point the total area of coffee developed as much as 35,000 hectares across the province. However, according to experts, the quality gradually went down and this in turn led to poor competitiveness because farmers in many places developed coffee spontaneously, without planning, and even grew coffee in unsuitable soil, with shortage of water supply and sometimes shortage of investment capital. Moreover, farmers were afflicted by the increasingly unstable price and consumption so they cut down coffee and transferred to other crops. As a result, the total area of coffee across the province has decreased by about 17,000 hectares up to now.

    Particularly, from early this year, coffee’s price shows signs of increasing with big profit so farmers in many places in the province has turned back to cut down the less productive crops to expand the coffee area. The chorus “grow then cut down, cut down then grow” concerning coffee tends to recur.

    In the meantime, according to MARD, in recent years, the spontaneous development of crops without planning, including coffee, tends to increase in a number of localities. 2007’s statistics show that the area of coffee across the country has increased by 506,000 hectares, up 10,000 hectare against 2006. In many places, due to high coffee price, farmers have done away with other crops to grow coffee even in soils planned for afforestation.

    Even in some places, especially the Highland and the Northwest, farmers deforest illegally to have land to grow coffee. The above-mentioned spontaneous development not only breaks the planning for other crops, exerting a bad influence on the environment, but also increases the risk of oversupply, leading to risks of price and consumption market concerning producers.

    In such situation, to maintain the prestige and the quality of Vietnam’s coffee in the world market, especially when our country has participated in WTO, MARD has issued a directive in which area of coffee is asked not to be expanded and localities, particularly the Highland and the Northwest are asked to strictly deal with cases of deforestation for coffee growing, boost management in seed quality and not let people make use of the high demand for seeds to deal in low quality ones.

    According to DARD, there are less or more than 16,100 hectares of coffee across the province but the average productivity just reaches 17.7 quintals per hectare, which is 2 quintals per hectares lower than the average productivity of the whole country. Nguyen Van Giau, Director of DARD said that most of the total area of coffee of the province was old and stunted and the seeds were not selected and that the newly grown in 2006, which were just about 220 hectares, had not been harvested so the average productivity was very low.

    Therefore, he said, farmers should not cut down other crops to transfer to coffee massively but should focus on improving the old and the stunted to boost productivity and quality. The most important thing was to put into use highly productive new seed varieties, apply scientific advances to phases of care in order to reduce wages and the input costs etc, he said.

    Presently in the province, two new highly productive coffee seed varieties, TR 4 and TR 5, had been tested so if farmers did well in caring, it was likely for these seed varieties to reach productivity of between 6 and 7 meter tons per hectare, said Dong Nai Centre for Agriculture Encouragement.

    Besides, farmers’ ways to harvest crops still have shortcomings, mainly by hand. Tools for harvest have not met hygiene standards, strongly affecting products’ quality.

    The province and DARD have already categorized coffee in the group of key crops and this crop is expected to develop as much as about 22-25 thousand hectares.

    MARD has also asked the agencies under it to early complete the project “competitive power of Vietnam coffee to be boosted”, in which coffee quality will be focused on improving and farmers will be supported to transfer to new seed varieties etc

    Written by Dong Nai Newspaper, Translated by THKC