Vietnam told to focus on cocoa quality, not volume

If Vietnam intends to be a serious player on the world cocoa market, it should aim initially to produce a limited amount of top quality beans, an industry official said on Thursday. "Vietnam has to focus on high quality cocoa beans to enter the market with limited volume," Tom Harrison, a non-executive director of Britain's Armajaro Holding, told an international coffee conference in Ho Chi Minh City.
"To enter the top-end market, Vietnam should produce 10,000 tonnes of high quality beans over the next five years" and that volume could be expanded later to 100,000 tonnes, he said.
In 1998, Vietnam drafted a 10-year plan to grow 80,000 hectares (198,000 acres) of cocoa trees in a country that is the world's top exporter of robusta coffee, used largely for instant coffee.
Coffee farmers have been trying other crops since prices hit 30-year lows in 2001. But only 1,000 hectares of cocoa have been planted so far as farmers are unsure of what the market for the beans might be, the Agriculture Ministry says. Industry officials said the government had yet to pay significant attention to cocoa growing.
"Vietnam has to have a system, a steering body to get it right," Harrison told the conference organised by IBC Asia Pte Ltd and co-hosted by the Agriculture Ministry and the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (Vicofa), the industry body.
Vietnam should study the market, identify land and labour and set up quality standards, while the industry needed to look at taxation, tariffs and government aid, Harrison said.
Traders and Vicofa officials said the industry body had yet to start working seriously on the cocoa plan, spending most of its time and resources on coffee, Vietnam's second-highest agricultural export earner after rice.
Last year, sceptical coffee farmers in southern provinces of Ben Tree and BA Ria-Vung Tau started growing cocoa, with expertise in planting, harvesting and fermentation skills provided by US non-profit group ACDI/VOCA.
Funded by the US Department of Agriculture, the group's project aims for 14,000 hectares of cocoa by 2008 in four southern provinces to turn out 10,000 tonnes of good beans, Ross Ajax, ACDI/VOCA country representative, said in July.
Cocoa trees need shade and do not require intensive watering. They take 2 to 3 years to become productive and can be harvested twice a year, with the main period in March and April.
Experts say cocoa trees could be planted on the same soil as coffee, rubber or cashew.