Over 40 hectares of coffee in the K’Ho ethnic community’s intensive coffee-growing area of Da Don Commune, Lam Ha District, Lam Dong Province, are suffering from leaf yellowing, branch and trunk dieback, and complete plant death—causing an estimated loss of more than 10 billion VND.
According to the Da Don Commune People’s Committee, all of these coffee trees are more than ten years old. Farmers have already had to uproot plants after yields in the most recent season dropped to only about 0.5 tons per hectare. The affected area may continue to expand, as several other coffee plots are beginning to show signs of leaf yellowing and branch dieback, which will sharply reduce future yields.
The Lam Dong Department of Agriculture and Rural Development reported that the initial cause of this mass die-off appears to be poor planting techniques—shallow, undersized planting holes, seedlings not properly root-pruned before transplanting—and improper crop care, which left the trees vulnerable to fungal infections and root-knot nematodes.
Agricultural officials have advised farmers to “clean and start over”: dig up and remove any coffee trees infected with fungi, cut back or graft and rehabilitate those whose root systems remain disease-free.
However, many farmers doubt this diagnosis. They point out that if the trees had truly been planted with improper techniques, they could not have thrived and produced for more than a decade. Moreover, the recommended solutions are essentially equivalent to replanting from scratch, which would leave them without income for several years.