Currently, post-harvest losses in coffee production in Đắk Lắk province remain quite high, accounting for 14–15% of the province’s total coffee output, causing significant damage to coffee-producing households.
Most of these losses occur at the household level, mainly because of poor-quality raw materials, harvesting unripe cherries, and inadequate processing equipment.
According to the Department of Industry and Trade, there are currently three types of coffee bean processing methods in the province: wet processing, dry processing, and what is commonly called “improvised” processing.
Wet and dry processing are mainly carried out by 34 coffee businesses. These companies strictly follow proper harvesting of fully ripe cherries and have invested hundreds of billions of VND in modern equipment to produce nearly 80,000 tons of export-standard green coffee beans, thereby minimizing post-harvest losses.
Meanwhile, the remaining 80% of coffee output (about 320,000 tons per year) is processed by smallholder farmers using improvised methods. Specifically, after harvesting, farmers typically dry the whole cherries in the traditional way, then roughly hull them for drying, or pulp them before drying and later hull them again to obtain green coffee beans, which are then sold to dealers or companies. After purchase, companies have to reprocess these beans in machines to meet export standards.
The Đắk Lắk Department of Industry and Trade notes that with this method, not only are the beans easily broken and subject to higher losses, but they also contain many impurities, and the quality of the coffee beans is inconsistent.
The province has introduced policies to support cooperatives, households, and individuals by offering loans and interest subsidies to purchase machinery and equipment for drying and processing coffee. Farmers can borrow up to 100% of the value of the equipment (through the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development), with the State covering 100% of the interest in the first two years and 50% from the third year.
The province also aims to limit the harvesting of unripe green cherries, gradually mechanize drying and processing, and rapidly reduce the use of improvised household methods. At the same time, it is promoting modern industrial processing (wet processing) to reduce post-harvest coffee losses to 10% by 2015.
Currently, Đắk Lắk has over 196,000 hectares of coffee, producing more than 400,000 tons of green coffee beans each year, of which 85% of the planted area and 80% of the output are produced by smallholder farmers.