With support from the Northern Mountainous Agro-Forestry Science and Technology Institute, Arabica coffee has now proven both sustainable and profitable, and many families in Sơn La have become well-off thanks to this crop. Yet for many people in the Northwest, memories of the “bitter coffee seasons” before the year 2000 remain vivid.
“More branches, more cherries” — and more trouble
Nguyễn Doãn Hùng, a technical specialist from the Northwest Agro-Forestry Research and Development Center, arrived in the Mai Sơn Arabica coffee area in 1999 and quickly came to know the “personality” of the crop. Arabica is relatively easy to grow and adapts to many soils—basalt, feralit, reddish-brown loams—with a shallow root system that does well in soils just 50 cm deep and with a pH of 4.5–6. Its cup quality is superior to Robusta (widely planted in the Central Highlands), and its market price is usually 1.5–2 times higher. But Arabica thrives only above 600–700 m elevation and needs over 1,500 mm of annual rainfall—conditions found in places like Mai Sơn, Sơn La City, and Thuận Châu.
Seeing this potential, a fruit-and-vegetable company in Sơn La boldly invested in the early 1990s, lending farmers money for seedlings and fertilizer to expand Arabica coffee on a large scale. But without proper training in cultivation techniques, the crop languished. Then, at the end of 1999, a historic frost swept across the entire Northwest, wiping out thousands of hectares of Arabica in Sơn La and Lai Châu. Many farmers, already struggling, suddenly found themselves deep in debt.
Engineer Hùng recalls that after the 1999 frost, staff from the Ba Vì Arabica Coffee Research Center (now the Northwest Agro-Forestry R&D Center) were sent to Sơn La to assess the damage. Although Sơn La then had some 7,000–8,000 ha of coffee, farmers’ planting methods were rudimentary.
To illustrate, he introduced Trần Thị Diên of Chiềng Ban commune, Mai Sơn. She remembered how, when the planting boom began in 1993, villagers rushed to collect seed and plant seedlings—sometimes buying whatever seedlings they could find. Coffee crept from low valleys up the hillsides. Planting holes were scarcely the size of a rice bowl; seedlings were simply stuck in, as if planting quick-growing acacia. Fertilizer supplied by the company was dumped in a single hole—no thought for basal or top-dressing techniques.
Villagers believed dense planting meant more branches and more cherries. Surviving trees were never pruned or topped at 1.8–2 m as recommended; instead they shot sky-high like bamboo. At harvest time, pickers had to pull branches down to strip the cherries, leaving the plantation ragged and leaning. Heavy rains turned soil to mud and entire plots collapsed.
Then came the 1999 frost: hillsides of fruit-laden Arabica blackened and withered overnight. Some farmers cut the stumps and switched to maize, vowing never to grow coffee again. Diên herself was left with two hectares of dead stumps and debts of hundreds of millions of đồng—huge for 1999.
Doing it right brings rewards
Her husband Vũ Ngọc Lợi recalls that in 2002, while considering planting maize on the ruined land, researchers from the Northern Mountainous Agro-Forestry Institute—Ms. Quý and Mr. Hân—offered a recovery plan. They grafted the frost-damaged stumps with NT1 and NT2 Arabica cultivars. By 2003 the grafts were thriving. Encouraged, the couple borrowed again to plant more than two additional hectares of Catimor Arabica.
This time they followed proper technique: rows 2 m apart, plants 1.2 m apart; holes 50 cm wide and deep, with correct basal applications of phosphate, lime, and manure. For the first three years, before the coffee shaded the soil, they intercropped legumes such as peanuts and soybeans to add income, maintain moisture, and prevent erosion. Fertilizer was applied 3–4 times per year in measured doses rather than all at once. Shade trees such as Cuban eucalyptus or fruit trees were planted to keep soil moist and protect the coffee from frost. Since then, even when winter frost returns each year, the coffee has not been harmed.
By 2005, their rejuvenated coffee field yielded its first bumper crop—20 tons of cherries per hectare, earning over 200 million VND. Only then did Chiềng Ban villagers realize how far their earlier methods had been from proper practice.
Today in Chiềng Ban, Thát Lót, Nà Pó and other areas of Mai Sơn, the Arabica coffee hills stand in neat, even rows. Farmers no longer chase “many branches, many cherries” but plant at proper spacing, prune and top trees, plant shade, and fertilize strictly according to technical guidelines. Yields now reach 15–20 tons of cherries per hectare, and the bitter seasons of the 1990s have become a lesson in the value of sound agronomy.