Coffee farm owners across Vietnam’s Central Highlands spend heavily to guard their plantations—otherwise an entire harvest can be lost to thieves.
When Thieves Resort to Robbery
Trương Văn Thủy, a government employee in Tân Lợi Ward, Buôn Ma Thuột City, owns a 5-hectare coffee plantation in Cư Né Commune, Krông Búk District, nearly 70 km from his home. He says that in ten years of coffee farming, his greatest worry isn’t the investment or cultivation—it’s protecting the trees.
Because he lives far away, Thủy hires relatives to watch the fields year-round and seasonal workers during harvest. Yet theft remains constant. On a large farm, thieves play “hide and seek”: when you guard one end, they slip in at the other. Each harvest, he typically loses a few hundred kilograms of fresh cherries. One year, even his hired pickers stole several hundred kilos of coffee that was drying on the farm. Thủy now takes a month off work every harvest season to personally “camp out” and guard the crop—finishing the season exhausted and gaunt from sleepless nights.
According to Dr. Lê Ngọc Báu of the Central Highlands Agriculture and Forestry Science Institute, chronic theft pushes farmers to pick cherries early (“green picking”). This shortens the plant’s growth cycle, causing premature flowering and reducing yield and quality. Early picking also weakens trees, makes them vulnerable to pests, and raises maintenance costs.
Theft haunts coffee heartlands such as Buôn Hồ, Cư M’gar, Krông Pắk, and Cư Kuin. In one notorious 2008–2009 case, Lê Văn Hùng of Tân Quảng Hamlet, Ea Kênh Commune, found two newly fruiting plots ravaged: thieves hacked off entire branches to strip the cherries. Local TV filmed the devastation, but despite Hùng’s formal complaint and photos submitted as evidence, no culprit was ever named. He eventually had to uproot hundreds of damaged coffee trees and replant.
Ea Kênh police chief Y Blai Niê says theft is common, often involving residents crossing into neighboring communes. Most cases end with only minor administrative fines and returning stolen goods. Only one thief, Nghiệp of Ea Yông Commune, received a prison sentence after being caught stealing 180 kg of cherries and then rallying accomplices with weapons to reclaim the seized coffee.
Recently, in the 2009 harvest, police caught several youths from Ea Knuếc stealing more than 200 kg of coffee. In one brazen incident, three brothers arrived at night with a farm tractor to haul away stolen cherries and were caught red-handed.
Landowners Caught Between Fear and Compromise
Ea Kênh lies amid major coffee estates like Thắng Lợi, Phước An, and Tháng Mười. These large companies maintain organized security, so theft there is rare. But smallholders’ scattered plots are far harder to protect.
Nguyễn Văn Sinh, deputy director of Đắk Lắk’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, notes that most of the province’s 150,000 coffee-farming households operate in isolation, making collective protection difficult. Of 113 agricultural cooperatives in the province, none specializes in coffee. Pilot programs—such as household groups in Hòa Tiến and Ea Kuang and the coffee-producer alliance in Cư Êbur—show that cooperatives can help farmers guard their crops, reduce early picking, improve quality, and secure better prices.
Farmer Lê Văn Đức, a relative of Hùng, explains that from the time cherries harden in May or June until the end of harvest, his family pays guards to live in makeshift huts—even in the rainy season. Theft often begins when cherries are still green. Fear of thieves forces some farmers to pick early; others, lacking workers, strip all fruit at once, even if unripe. “The most effective way to prevent theft is to pick green—better to harvest early yourself than let someone else steal it,” Đức says.
Hùng adds that even after harvest, when coffee is flowering, poor villagers enter fields to collect fallen cherries. Out of sympathy, many farmers let them in, but their movement causes blossoms to drop and reduces the next crop. If chased away, these “gleaners” might retaliate and damage the trees, so many landowners reluctantly release petty thieves they catch with only a few dozen kilos.
Having lost nearly 200 coffee trees, 300 intercropped durians, and hundreds of windbreak acacias, Hùng has learned to adopt a “softer” approach to protecting his plantation—balancing the need to safeguard his livelihood against the risk of provoking revenge.