While families everywhere were busy shopping for the Lunar New Year, coffee farmers in Đắk Lắk were rushing to their fields to fight drought.
At dawn, husband and wife Nguyễn Văn Chiến from Buôn Hồ town woke early to haul their irrigation pump to the coffee plot. “If all goes well, we can finish pumping by the 28th day of the lunar month,” Chiến explained. “But if the pump breaks or water runs short, we might still be working on New Year’s Eve. If the coffee trees lack water too long, the cherries will stay small and yields will drop.”
Đắk Lắk province has more than 185,000 ha of coffee. This year, an off-season rain from a tropical depression saved farmers one irrigation round—but it also pushed the next watering earlier, right before Tet.
Farmer Trần Văn Hoàn in Quảng Phú town, Cư M’gar district, usually pumps water for his two hectares using electricity. But in the last few days so many people have been irrigating at once that the power keeps cutting out. “I have to wait until the 29th when others stop pumping,” he said, “then I’ll run my pump straight through the first day of the New Year to finish.”
Along the road from Cư M’gar to Buôn Ma Thuột this week, the air buzzed with the roar of engines, voices calling back and forth, and the hiss of white streams of water showering coffee leaves.
By one irrigation well, farmer Nguyễn Văn Dần and his wife hunched over their broken pump, faces weary after several sleepless nights. “We should have finished watering today,” Dần said, “but the machine broke—we don’t know when we can get it fixed.”
Across the vast coffee plantations, only children and the elderly remain at home. The main workforce has all gone out to the fields to protect the crop. This year, Tet arrives late for Đắk Lắk’s coffee growers.