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The Vietnam News

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Vietnam must improve coffee quality

HANOI - The key to lifting Vietnam's beleaguered coffee industry out of its prolonged slump is an improvement in the quality of its export beans, coffee experts say. Annemieke Wijn, a senior official from the German Coffee Association, said Vietnam must strive to set minimum quality standards for coffee exports.

"Resolving the quality problem is the single biggest issue facing Vietnam's coffee industry at the moment," she said ahead of a two-day international conference discussing the future of the country's coffee industry. Vietnam, the world's biggest producer of robusta beans and the second largest coffee exporter after Brazil, has been blamed for flooding the market with low-grade robusta coffee and triggering a global price slump. Doan Trieu Nhan, chairman of the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (VICOFA), concurred that quality improvements are crucial, but said Vietnam is facing difficulties in achieving new International Coffee Organisation (ICO) standards.

"Our problem is what to do with beans that don't meet export quality. In some countries in Central and South America they burn their low grade coffee, but in Vietnam 85% of all production belongs to farmers and we cannot tell them to burn their crops." Nhan said the industry body was also trying to help farmers reduce coffee production costs, replace non-sustainable coffee cultivation with other crops, and increase production of high quality arabica beans.

Arabica currently only accounts for 20,000 hectares of the estimated 500,000 hectares under coffee cultivation in Vietnam or 2% of total production.

Agence France Presse - March 05, 2003.