In 2019, IUCN commissioned a rapid assessment of opportunities to transition the coffee monocultures that dominate the Central Highlands into a diverse crop mix with significant benefits in terms of total crop value, drought resilience, coffee supply, and dry season water availability and downstream flows. This analysis just covered Dak Lak, Vietnam’s largest coffee producing province.

The 2019 rapid assessment was updated in 2020: https://www.iucn.org/news/viet-nam/202008/transforming-coffee-and-water-use-central-highlands-vietnam-case-study-dak-lak-province. 

There is growing business interest in such transition to reduce the risk of farmers abandoning coffee altogether under conditions in increasing climate variability, thereby threatening global supply chains, and to ensure compliance with increasingly strict international regulations on pesticide residues. See: https://www.iucn.org/news/viet-nam/202010/business-consultation-coffee-transformation-and-water-use-vietnams-central-highlands.

Building on the 2020 assessment, in 2021 IUCN commissioned a more detailed analysis of the costs and benefits of the proposed transition from coffee monocultures into diverse, higher value, and less water intensive agroforestry across all five provinces in the Central Highlands (Kon Tum, Gia Lai, Dak Lak, Dak Nong and Lam Dong).

In this report, different options for agricultural transformation are analyzed in terms of coffee production, water saving, profitability and climate change mitigation both at the landscape and farm level. Conclusions and recommendations are presented.

To download the report in English, click here: LINK

To download the Executive Summary in Vietnamese, click here: LINK