Khe Sanh Arabica Coffee – Quang Tri: The Sanh Arabica coffee is one of eight essential coffee- Arabica regions of Vietnam. With an effective replanting strategy of coffee Arabica in Huong Hoa district, Quang Tri province, it is urgent to restructure the industry of coffee farming to develop the Khe Sanh coffee brand to gain international stature.
Khe Sanh coffee tree – Quang Tri
Khe Sanh is in central Vietnam, in Huong Hoa district, Quang Tri province. Khe Sanh place is known to the world through the battle of Khe Sanh in 1968 in the history of the Vietnam War.
This place is likened to the “second Dien Bien Phu battle” or the “hell on earth” place in the mind of the US Marines. Today, Khe Sanh is known for its monuments to tourism and the potential for the Khe Sanh Arabica coffee brand.
Initiating the Khe Sanh coffee tree, there is a document that Eugène Poilane – a French soldier and a botanist, came to Vietnam in 1909 as an artillery worker working for a naval engineering workshop. Then the naturalist Auguste Chevalier appointed Poilane as a surveyor for the biological institute, and Poilane became representative of the forest management service of Indochina in 1922.
In 1918, Poilane first passed through the area that later became the village of Khe Sanh. Being attracted by the lush trees here and thinking that the red soil is suitable for coffee trees, in 1926, Poilane returned to Khe Sanh and imported Chiari coffee trees to plant and established the first coffee plantation. In Khe Sanh (According to Puriocafe ).
Khe Sanh coffee tree today
Until now, Khe Sanh coffee still holds a pioneer position in the central coffee and tea region. The coffee-growing area in Khe Sanh is about 4,600ha, concentrated in 3 communes: Huong Phung, Huong Linh, and Tan Lien; scattered in Huong Tan, Huong Son, Phung Lam, and Huc communes.
Huong Phung commune plays the most important role because it has the largest growing area, accounting for 80% of the coffee-growing region of Huong Hoa district, the most favorable weather due to the least rain in the communes and finally the suitable altitude, 670m above sea level.
Coffee varieties grown mainly in Khe Sanh are red-fruited Catimor since 1993, with very little yellow-fruited Catimor. Khe Sanh has experimented with increasing Robusta since 1968 but failed because the Robusta tree was cross-pollinated and could not stand drought, culminating in the dry season of 2015 (12/2014 to 5/2015) the lack killed all the plants.
Robusta in Khe Sanh. In 2013, the Central Highlands Research Institute successfully created the TN1 variety, a hybrid between Robusta and Typica, currently being tested on Tan Lam farm.
Local coffee growing efforts
Since 1998, with the government’s attention to developing the Lao Bao critical economic region, Khe Sanh Arabica coffee has been focused on development. Still, many regrettable marks in the story have not been achieved.
The most prominent was in 2011 – 2012 when coffee growers in Huong Hoa struggled because the coffee crop had failed and the price dropped (coffee price was sometimes as low as 7,000 VND/kg). Despite the outstanding development in reputation, coffee farmers in Khe Sanh still face many difficulties and inadequacies.
Khe Sanh Coffee Association has 34 members, including processing enterprises and farmers combined with processing facilities.
Khe Sanh has three green coffee export factories: Dai Loc, Minh Tien, and Thuong Phu, six enterprise factories: Acep, Thanh Danh, Tran Thi Huong Trung, Bui Thi Huong Khuong, San Quyet, and Vuong Thai, and has about six more farmers involved in green coffee processing.
In addition, Khe Sanh has a typical farmer’s club, where 7-10 farmers gather to exchange farming, harvesting, and processing methods at the request of purchasing and processing enterprises, in the direction of coffee. Clean coffee, do not use herbicides in coffee fields, limit chemical fertilizers (gradually replaced by microbial fertilizers), etc.
The size of large farmers is only about 4-5 ha/household, so businesses and processing facilities have to buy from many farmers. Therefore, the quality of fresh coffee is not uniform, it is difficult to control the quality of fresh fruit in terms of quality and quality, and the percentage of green fruit left behind is high.
References:
- Primecoffea, Cà phe Arabica Khe Sanh – Quảng Trị, Tháng Hai 24, 2018