Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/612330
50 STiR tea & coffee industry international / Issue 6, 2015 (December/January) including a tree unique to Vietnam, mit café or jackfruit coffee, recognized by its oversized leaves. Hanh emphasizes that he is renovating and upgrading his trees by grafting clonal scions to established root stock using TR 14 and TR 18 arabica, which have very high resistance to disease and produce dense or heavy cherries. The farm is Rainforest Alliance certified. He uses only organic fertilizer and estimates his current yield conservatively at 4,000 kg/ha. He also grows tea. Asked which is the "better crop," he replies, "With cof- fee, I can buy gold; with tea, food." Trending In Vietnam, those at the top of the coffee supply chain are learning to work more closely with NGOs and farmers on certi- fication schemes: fair trade, organic prac- tices, sustainability. To qualify for Fair Trade certification farmers must organize into collectives. Training and improving farm practices can be done efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively through a co-operative. There is also a growing awareness on the farm, at the processing plant and at the warehouse, of just how critical it is to harvest and sort ripe cherries to prevent unripe or diseased fruit from moving up the supply chain; to get drying right, moisture levels optimal; to remove float- ers, damaged, and discolored beans and extraneous material. Farm gate and spot pricing puts the farmer and producer at the mercy of un- predictable fluctuations in the market. Transparent, fair price-setting that cush- ions farmers and others from drastic, un- predictable swings could be adopted. Value-addition is being studied at all levels of the coffee industry in Viet- nam. Valorizing, branding, and realigning toward a growing domestic market are good strategies for those at the lower lev- els of the value chain. The smallholder is at a disadvantage due to lack of credit and clout, but farmers could form collective organizations to build processing facto- ries, warehouses, etc. Diversification is a very hot topic in Vietnam – at farm level, at the factory, at retail. Farmers are actively looking at which food crops they might grow to protect themselves from the price fluc- tuations typical of the commodity-mono- culture environment. New coffee trees cover the rolling hills of Vietnam Grower Va Hong Hanh with TR14 cuttings, above, right and below. Hanh points to where cuttings have been grafted. Above, organic fertilizer pellets. Photos by Frank J. Miller Panorama of flower and vegetable greenhouses outside Dalat