Farmers from the North-West of Vietnam weighing their coffee to sell it © Thuan Sarzynski

Climate change needs high-quality coffee

I heard voices outside in the darkness of the night. People were dragging something on the ground. A quick look at my phone, it was 4 a.m. Still drunk, I fell back into slumber. Rain was drumming on the wooden roof.

In the morning, I realized farmers woke up at night to cover the coffee beans drying outside. Coffee cherries ripened early this year and harvest started in October. Farmers wet-processed the cherries and dried the hulled beans on their patio. The unusual rain was a problem as it slowed down coffee drying, reduced coffee quality, and increased farmers’ work who had to ensure beans don’t get wet.

I started working in the province of Son La in the North-West of Vietnam two years ago when I started collecting data for my PhD on new coffee hybrids planted in the region. In Latin America where the hybrids were created, they produced more and had better quality than commercial varieties. Also, they grew better and had more fruits in an agroforestry system than in full sun. These new hybrids are the hope of the whole coffee industry to adapt to climate change. The goal of my PhD was to test these coffee hybrids in agroforestry systems in Son La, a province in the North-West of Vietnam.

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