VIETNAM 33
Another of the many foreign partners
involved in Vietnam’s latest commodity adventure is the Swiss Association for International Co-operation, Helvetas. Working in the Ben Tre and Tien Giang provinces, Helvetas has provided support worth almost US$500,000 to implement research and technical assistance pro- grammes for smallholder farmers. In a four-year project, which will continue
until December 2013, about 1,000 small farmers with an average of 0.2 hectares each are learning better cultivation practices in order to improve the quality of the cocoa they grow and increase yields. However, the largest boost to
Vietnam’s cocoa industry came when the US Development Agency (USAID) set up the US$5.5 million SUCCESS programme. The Sustainable Cocoa Enterprise Solutions for Smallholders pro- gramme is based in Vietnam’s fer- tile central highlands in the Dak Lak region and is operated as a pub- lic-private partnership with the USDA, the WCF and Mars Inc. When USAID first started working with
Vietnamese farmers have benefitted from assistance from a number of sources
a producer of high quality cocoa beans- and in particular of certified sustainable beans," said Harold Poelma, Managing Director cocoa for Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate. The company started developing its
Cargill has invested significantly in the fast-growing Vietnamese market
Yields and quality
the cocoa industry in Vietnam, the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association, Vicofa, reported a total cultivated area of just 600 hectares, almost exclusively in state-owned farms. By 2010 this figure had grown to about 10,000 hectares officially registered by the Ministry of Agriculture. To-date, more than 22,000 farmers have been trained.
Building on SUCCESS
From the beginning, the focus of the SUC- CESS programme has been on providing farmers with training and incentives to adopt sustainable cultivation practices whilst producing cocoa of a quality that is attractive to the global market. The main target for expanding cocoa
production has been the provinces of Ben Tre and Tien Giang in the Mekong delta and Ba Ria Vung Tau and Binh Phuoc in the southeast. All four provinces have favourable climatic and soil conditions and local government commitment to cocoa development. Pilot plots in these provinces started to
produce cocoa beans within 18 months of the initial planting in 2003 and by 2009 were already reported to be producing a full harvest, a USAID report on the SUC- CESS project said.
growing quickly Yields for the farms participating in the pro- gramme are expected to reach 1.5-2.0 tonnes per hectare, which at current world prices would earn US$3,750-5,000 per hectare. This is similar to the income levels earned by Vietnamese coffee farmers in 1994 following the frost in Brazil that year, which was one of the main reasons Vietnam embarked on its massive coffee-growing expansion programme. "The programme has helped us to invest
in this new tree without interfering in our existing harvest, and the training has brought us growing techniques as well as helped us build confidence. We are now quite confident to invest in this tree," Tran Van Thanh, one of the cocoa farmers in Ben Tre province, who was among the first to join the SUCCESS programme, explained. The quick rise of Vietnam’s cocoa indus-
try has also led to a boom in the participa- tion of private business partners, with Cargill leading efforts to improve the sector in the Central Highlands, becoming the driv- ing force behind the delivery of Vietnam’s first shipment of UTZ Certified cocoa in 2001. "The delivery of the first UTZ Certified
beans produced in Vietnam, from the first three certified co-operatives, is an impor- tant milestone in Vietnam’s development as
cocoa business in Vietnam in 2004 in order to help the industry grow and produce high quality, sustainable cocoa. During the course of the last five years it has helped train over 12,000 farmers. At more than 100 cocoa demonstration
farms Vietnamese farmers receive training in best practice for growing, harvesting and fermenting cocoa in order to help them improve quality standards, according to company information. Last year Cargill opened its third buying station in Binh Phuoc province, adding to the two buying stations established in 2005 in Ben Tre and Dak Lak provinces.
Single origin
Vietnamese In less than 10 years, Vietnam’s cocoa industry has undergone impressive change and the specialty chocolate industry is already starting to take notice, with the country’s first arrival of UTZ certified beans in European markets in 2010 followed by the introduction of a single-origin 100 per cent Vietnamese chocolate in 2011. The single source Vietnamese choco-
late comes in a 70 per cent cocoa formula- tion with fruity, spicy flavour attributes, with citrus and cinnamon notes, said Bryn Kirk, who for over 10 years worked for the Milwaukee-based Ambrosia Chocolate Company and today runs the Chocolate University, an information and education service for chocolate fans. "The future is very promising for cocoa in Vietnam," Mr Kirk concluded. C&CI
May 2011 C&CI
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52