With the current price at 13,000 VND per kilogram of fresh cherries, Arabica coffee growers in Da Lat are facing a surge in coffee theft.
Although the main harvest has only just begun, many Arabica farmers say they are “sitting on a bed of fire,” as thefts have flared up again. They note a familiar pattern: whenever Arabica coffee prices rise, thieves become bolder, leaving farmers almost powerless to stop them.
Many growers are forced to follow the saying “better pick it green at home than let it ripen in the field,” stripping both ripe and unripe cherries in a single round to protect the fruits of their year-long work. At today’s prices, a thief can slip into a coffee plot and, in just 30 minutes, steal cherries worth anywhere from a few hundred thousand to several million dong.
Nguyen Van Vu, who lives in Da Lat but owns a coffee plot in Ta Nung commune, said that without someone guarding day and night, he recently lost about half a ton of cherries—an estimated 6.5 million VND.
Other families in Ta Nung report thieves repeatedly sneaking in to pick anywhere from a few dozen kilograms to hundreds of kilograms of coffee. Since the harvest began, entire families have had to patrol their farms around the clock. But with coffee gardens stretching across hundreds of hectares, keeping watch is extremely difficult. When confronted, thieves quickly hide or flee, leaving the owners unable to catch them.
Farmer Ha Van Tam complained, “The thieves are brazen. If we guard one corner of the field at night, they steal from another. We have no choice but to hire workers to pick as quickly as possible to stay ahead of them.”
Local police in Ta Nung say they have stepped up patrols and organized neighborhood watch teams to work with farm owners day and night. They have solved a few small cases, but the culprits caught so far have been only children eight or nine years old; their families were called in to take them home for discipline.
Meanwhile, larger, organized thefts—those causing losses of tens of millions of dong—remain unresolved and continue to worry Da Lat’s Arabica coffee farmers.