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The Vietnam News

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Drought to cut Vietnam coffee crop by a third

BUON MA THUOT CITY - A prolonged drought is likely to cut by one third the next coffee crop in Vietnam, the world’s top producer of the robusta variety, an industry official told Reuters on Thursday.

“It is still early to give a forecast, but we reckon the drought would cut 30 percent,” Van Thanh Huy, chairman of the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (Vicofa) said in an interview. This was the first Vicofa forecast of the next harvest due in October, almost a year after the onset of a drought with the early arrival of the dry season last September. The last harvest, which ended in January, produced 12 million 60-kg bags, or 720,000 tonnes, down from 14.2 million bags in the previous crop, Huy said.

There have been good rains in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong recently, but it has remained dry in the neighbouring provinces of Daklak and Gia Lai. Those three, plus Kontum and Dak Nong provinces in the Central Highlands coffee belt, produce 80 percent of Vietnam’s coffee.

Huy, citing the latest estimates by district agricultural officials in Daklak, which produces one third of Vietnam’s coffee, said the province’s next harvest would be 100,000 tonnes below the 330,000 tonnes he said it yielded in the last crop. Huy gave no forecasts for Vietnam’s coffee exports from the next harvest. Around 867,000 tonnes of beans were exported between October 2003 and September 2004, Vicofa said — less than government data showing a record 958,000 tonnes of coffee shipped during the crop year ending September 2004.

Trees green again: Seen from the air, coffee trees have turned green in the area surrounding the airport in the Daklak capital of Buon Ma Thuot and ponds again contain water, unlike in March. “There have been some rains here and there in Daklak that made the trees green,” said Phan Muu Binh, director of Daklak’s Agriculture Department as he landed at the airport. Coffee traders said the rain helped relieve the parched region, but an accurate assessment of the drought damage would be possible only by late May once the rainy season has arrived. “No rain falling in February and March is not unusual as this is the dry season,” said a trader in Ho Chi Minh City.

Reuters - April 22, 2005