The term three-tier ecological coffee garden refers to coffee farms that were once planted in coffee monoculture but now include additional tree crops such as durian, avocado, pepper or cashew growing together in the same rows with coffee.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, coffee prices in recent years have not been very attractive—only about 36–40 thousand VND per kilogram—yet farmers have not abandoned their land as with some other crops. On the contrary, coffee acreage has continued to grow.
By 2020, in the Central Highlands alone coffee area reached 639,000 ha, up 138,300 ha (26.1 %) compared with 2010. Average yield also rose from 5.7 to 28 quintals/ha (an increase of 25.5 % over 2010). Thanks to that, in 2020 Vietnam supplied 1.642 million tons of coffee to the world market and 1.77 million tons in 2022, ranking second after Brazil.
Also by 2020, some 14,856 ha had been rejuvenated by replanting or grafting, and about 138,100 ha (21.5 % of the regional coffee area) had been intercropped with other plants.
Many farmers say that intercropping other agricultural species into their coffee gardens does not require extra work compared with traditional methods and brings the advantage of a more stable income—especially in years when coffee prices fall.
Under standard coffee cultivation guidelines, new plantings should include wind-break rows of forestry trees. But finding enough wind-break trees is costly and offers no supplementary income, unlike intercropping with agricultural crops. Intercropping also does not require extra fertilizer, irrigation or other care. As a result, farmers have quickly embraced this technical practice.
A Farmer’s Three-Tier Example
Trần Văn Định left his native Bình Định province as a child and settled with his family in Hamlet 8, Nghĩa Trung commune, Bù Đăng district, Bình Phước province. His family now manages 6.5 ha of farmland in two plots. Initially he grew coffee only, but later followed extension advice to intercrop cashew for both shade and an additional harvest.
When coffee prices dropped while pepper prices became very attractive, many households uprooted coffee to plant pepper. Định, seeing his coffee still vigorous, decided instead to add pepper vines among the coffee.
Today his 4 ha coffee field contains three crop layers: cashew with a broad canopy as the upper shade layer; pepper vines as the middle layer; and coffee growing beneath the shelter of both. The farm now has about 2,800 coffee trees—1,800 newly planted with grafted seedlings and 1,000 trees self-grafted by Định—plus 360 cashew trees and 200 pepper vines.
Even in poor cashew years the intercropped trees yield 8.5 tons of nuts; in good years 10–11 tons. The cashew trees currently “nurse” the pepper and coffee. Although the replanted coffee is less than three years old, it already produced 6 tons of first harvest coffee—about 1.5 tons of green beans per hectare (with just over 900 coffee trees per hectare). The pepper, not yet 30 months old, has also begun bearing. Định expects pepper yields to exceed 5 kg of dried pepper per vine and coffee yields to reach over 4 tons/ha in coming seasons.
Management and Inputs
Định credits agricultural extension officers, input suppliers, and advisors from Bình Điền Fertilizer JSC for guidance on fertilizer use. Despite three crops, he mainly fertilizes only the coffee and pepper; the cashew benefits from the nutrients supplied to these two.
He applies Đầu Trâu coffee fertilizer twice in the dry season (about 400 g per coffee or pepper plant), and in the rainy season uses Đầu Trâu NPK 16-16-8 about 300 kg/ha, four to five times per year across all 4 ha. Compared with monoculture coffee or pepper, this intercropping model requires less fertilizer and less labor for fertilizing and weeding.
Resilient and Profitable
With this three-tier ecological system, Định says he no longer fears crop failure. When coffee and pepper prices are low, cashew prices are often high. Each irrigation for coffee and pepper also benefits the cashew, which yields 24–30 kg of nuts per tree per season.
The model shows how diversified, multi-layer planting can stabilize farmers’ income, make better use of resources, and create a more sustainable and climate-resilient coffee production system.