Page 41 - Agricultural innovation

4.5.3. Opportunities and challenges
In the trend of integration with the international economy, Vietnam’s agriculture has gradually turned
to sustainable development, so ecological and regenerative agricultural models have gradually become
an inevitable trend. Therefore, this model is suitable for future development trends.
With economic, social and environmental benefits, the revived agricultural model for coffee in the
Central Highlands is a model for sustainable development that can be applied to other crops, especially
the trend of gradual transition from monoculture to multi-crop farming, from production-output-
based agriculture to agricultural economy-based development with an emphasis on added value and
sustainable development.
However, in the process of applying this farming model, certain challenges will be encountered.
First of all, with a long-term and comprehensive goal, the model requires the simultaneous
deployment of solutions and requires time to be effective, so it will contradict the short-term
benefits which affect livelihoods, etc. Moreover, with the limited awareness and understanding of
coffee growers with traditional farming methods that require long time to change their perceptions
and actions, this requires the unity of awareness and collective action of actors participating in the
value chain.

4.5.4. Conclusions

Nescafe Vietnam’s regenerative agriculture model in recent years has had certain successes, contributing
to the implementation of sustainable development strategies of Vietnam’s agricultural sector towards
ecological and organic agriculture, with the goal of restoring the environment and cultural and
community values.
In order for the model to be widely deployed with other regions or other crops and livestock, it
requires collective action of actors in the industry value chain from development strategy and policy
formulation levels to direct participants such as farmers, enterprises or government management levels
and provide support services such as input supply, agricultural extension or training, etc.

4.6. Landscape Coffee Model in the Central Highlands
4.6.1. General inforation
Coffee is one of the key commodities of Vietnam’s agriculture, making an important contribution to
the total export turnover of agricultural products. Vietnam has formed many major commodity coffee
producing areas, creating jobs and main income for nearly 700,000 farming households, contributing
to socio-economic development, hunger eradication and poverty alleviation in the Central Highlands
and South East Regions and some other coffee growing regions.
Besides these great achievements, Vietnam’s coffee industry is facing many limitations, in which
the link between production and processing is still limited; coffee quality is not high and uneven;
livelihoods, environment and production are not sustainable, especially in the context of climate
change. It has not kept up with the needs of the domestic and international markets with many
fluctuations, making the competitiveness of Vietnam’s coffee industry become a concern.
In recent years, the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) has partnered with a number of coffee
purchasing companies and local governments to pilot the “Verified Sourcing Areas” (VSA) program
towards sustainable landscape approach in three concentrated coffee production regions of over 15,000
ha in two provinces of Dak Lak and Lam Dong.
The common vision of the parties to the VSA initiative is to achieve the goal of achieving 100%
sustainable coffee and intercropping by 2025, rational resource management, no longer deforestation,
and raising the income of farmers and other goals on water and agrochemicals use.

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