HO CHI MINH CITY – Promoting a sustainable development of the coffee sector is a top priority for local authorities, coffee growers and businesses in Vietnam’s Central Highlands provinces.
With an annual average output of over 1.5 million tonnes, developing coffee has been underscored as key to Vietnam’s agricultural growth, said Director of the Central Highlands Agriculture and Forestry Science Institute Le Ngoc Bau.
He highlighted the advantageous climate and fertile soil of Central Highlands as well as the unique and creative farming techniques used in the area as the reasons that local producers can still sell their products despite the unstable coffee prices in the market.
The director, however, warned that an increasing number of local coffee growers in Central Highlands persist in harvesting green beans, which may result in their products being of lower quality.
Added to this, erratic weather and security issues also responsible for the unstable coffee quality, Bau said.
He suggested Vietnamese businesses in the field come up with solutions to enhance the quality of their products mainly via improving the harvesting process.
Local authorities must also intensify security during the harvest to ease workers’ worries of their coffee beans being stolen, Bau said.
Furthermore, the State should encourage farmers and enterprises to focus on deep processing, as one kilogram of soluble coffee has far greater value than the same amount of raw processing coffee.
Scientists have also been tasked with conducting more research on technological scientific solutions to increase replanting efficiency, which will spur the sustainable growth of local coffee in Central Highlands.
Source: VNA
