Farmers harvest coffee in Lam Dong Province (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) - A database of coffee areaswould be used as a digital tool to assist partners in managing coffeeplantations and quality in Vietnam, participants heard at a workshopheld by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and GlobalCoffee Platform (GCP) in Hanoi on May 23.
The database will assess how Vietnamesecoffee farmers understand and adopt good practices for sustainable coffeeproduction following a pilot programme held in Di Linh district in the CentralHighlands province of Lam Dong with the participation of more than 8,500coffee households.
The database will monitor origins, seeduse, status and management of land, water sources, irrigation systems andinter-cropping.
According to Le Van Duc, Deputy Director of theMARD’s Plant Cultivation Department, coffee needed origincertification for sustainable development towards improving quality, addedvalue and food safety.
It is very important to build a databasewith area codes to assess the origin of coffee products, Duc said.
He said the database would be available tohelp farmers to manage production input, helping businesses trace originand direct investment into production.
In order to expand this system, GCP’s chiefrepresentative in Vietnam Tran Quynh Chi said Lam Dong province would workwith the MARD and GCP to build a roadmap to develop the database system to thewhole province.
For other provinces, the GCP is working onother projects in the coffee industry to support farmersand help these provinces apply the system, Chi said.
"We need to apply this system on a largescale otherwise it would not be effective. We also need to apply it uniformlyto an entire region, and then we will have an overview of the coffeeindustry," she added.
According to Chi, the MARD had a number ofprogrammes for sustainable coffee development, including the Vietnam-SustainableAgriculture Transformation Project (VnSAT). These programmes arehelping the ministry to expand the database. On that basis,the ministry can develop guidelines for provinces to build their own budgetsand collect data.
In 2018, Vietnam had 680,000 hectares ofcoffee plantations with a yield of 2.5 tonnes per hectare. The country exported1.8 million tonnes of coffee with a value of 3.5 billion USD last year.-VNA
The database will assess how Vietnamesecoffee farmers understand and adopt good practices for sustainable coffeeproduction following a pilot programme held in Di Linh district in the CentralHighlands province of Lam Dong with the participation of more than 8,500coffee households.
The database will monitor origins, seeduse, status and management of land, water sources, irrigation systems andinter-cropping.
According to Le Van Duc, Deputy Director of theMARD’s Plant Cultivation Department, coffee needed origincertification for sustainable development towards improving quality, addedvalue and food safety.
It is very important to build a databasewith area codes to assess the origin of coffee products, Duc said.
He said the database would be available tohelp farmers to manage production input, helping businesses trace originand direct investment into production.
In order to expand this system, GCP’s chiefrepresentative in Vietnam Tran Quynh Chi said Lam Dong province would workwith the MARD and GCP to build a roadmap to develop the database system to thewhole province.
For other provinces, the GCP is working onother projects in the coffee industry to support farmersand help these provinces apply the system, Chi said.
"We need to apply this system on a largescale otherwise it would not be effective. We also need to apply it uniformlyto an entire region, and then we will have an overview of the coffeeindustry," she added.
According to Chi, the MARD had a number ofprogrammes for sustainable coffee development, including the Vietnam-SustainableAgriculture Transformation Project (VnSAT). These programmes arehelping the ministry to expand the database. On that basis,the ministry can develop guidelines for provinces to build their own budgetsand collect data.
In 2018, Vietnam had 680,000 hectares ofcoffee plantations with a yield of 2.5 tonnes per hectare. The country exported1.8 million tonnes of coffee with a value of 3.5 billion USD last year.-VNA
VNA
