The Central Highlands is considered a key region of coffee nationwide with Dak Lak making up more than 40 percent in the region and 30 percent in the country (Photo: VNA) Dak Lak (VNA) – Central Highlandprovinces are expanding the cultivation of long-term industrial crops topromote socio-economic development and improve the living standards of ethnicminority people.
Statistics showed that the region has 1.12million hectares of long-term industrial plants, making up more than 53 percentof total crop growing area, including 582,149 hectares of coffee, 251,348hectares of rubber and 85,000 hectares of pepper.
Dak Lak accounts for nearly 29 percent of theregion’s long-term industrial crop area, followed by Lam Dong, Gia Lai, DakNong and Kon Tum.
The Central Highlands is considered a key regionof coffee nationwide with Dak Lak making up more than 40 percent in the regionand 30 percent in the country.
Annually, the province harvests about 450,000tonne of coffee or more. Coffee also accounts for 86 percent of the totalexport turnover of farm produce, contributing more than 20 percent to the localbudget.
The coffee industry in Dak Lak has generatedjobs for hundreds of thousands of local workers.
However, the development of coffee and pepperhas led to overexploitation of land and water resources and the abuse offertilisers and pesticides, threatening the sustainable development oflong-term industrial crops.
The high production cost of key farm producesuch as coffee, pepper, rubber and cashew makes the products uncompetitive.
At present, Central Highland provinces arebuilding a planning scheme to improve the quality of products and ensure the sustainabledevelopment of industrial crops.
By 2020, the provinces aim to zone off 530,000hectares of coffee. Dak Lak will reduce the area to 190,000 hectares, Lam Dong150,000 hectares, Dak Nong 115,000 hectares and Gia Lai 75,000 hectares.
The localities will adopt intensive farming toensure annual output of 1.2 – 1.3 million tonnes of coffee.
They will also call for investment to build processingfactories for export staples like coffee, pepper, rubber, cashew nut and teawhile enabling businesses to seek partners and expand export markets.-VNA
VNA
