During the fifth Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Festival, held from March 8^th-12^th, NESCAFE Plan project announced the distribution of an additional 4 million coffee seedlings to support Central Highlands provinces in 2015, raising the number of seedlings under the project to nearly 11 million.

Farmers are instructed how to care for coffee seedlings. (Photo: PANO)

During the festival, experts from the project opened exchanges to share knowledge and experience on sustainable and effective coffee production with farmers.

According to the Western Highlands of Agriculture and Forestry Science Institute, the number of distributed coffee seedlings increased year by year, from 76,000 in 2011 to 4 million in 2014. As a result, the number of farmers receiving the seedlings also increased from 300 in 2011 to nearly 9,500 in 2014.

Mr. Le Ngoc Bau, Head of the WASI, said that NESCAFE Plan project had helped to tackle difficulties when re-planting coffee trees, supporting 50% of the seedlings market price for farmers, strongly encouraging the replacement of old coffee trees.

He added that the project also accelerated the supply of new breeds of coffee, providing a productivity of up to 7 tons of coffee per hectare, almost double the average current productivity.

Apart from the provision of good quality seedlings, the project also gave technical training to farmers, leading to a sharp increase in the number of farmers receiving the certificates of sustainable processing and business, from 1,745 in 2011 to over 13,800 in 2014./.

( Compiled by VNF )