Farmers harvest coffee in Lâm Đồng Province. – Photo baolamdong.vn

LÂM ĐỒNG – The Lâm Đồng Province People’s Committee has recognised a 371.6ha coffee growing area in Di Linh District as a hi-tech coffee growing area.

Located in Đinh Lạc Commune’s Tân Lạc 1, Tân Lạc 3 and Tân Lạc 4 villages, the area is cultivated by 325 households, four co-operatives and six coffee producing and processing establishments.

In the hi-tech coffee growing area, coffee growing households use machines to till the land and use automatic and semi-automatic chemical spraying mechanisms to prevent and control diseases. They also use composted animal manure to fertilise coffee.

Up to 90 per cent of the area’s coffee beans are dried by driers.

The area is also equipped with automatic weather and soil moisture monitoring facilities.

More farmers in Di Linh, which is the province’s largest coffee growing district, are using high technology to grow coffee to increase yield and quality.

They have also linked with co-operatives and companies to secure buyers and ensure stable prices.

The district has more than 44,000ha of coffee, with an annual output of 144,000 tonnes a year.

Trần Sương in Di Linh’s Đinh Lạc Commune has applied high technology to grow his 6ha coffee farm and get a high yield of 5 tonnes per hectare a crop.

He used automatic facilities to irrigate and fertilise coffee trees, increased the use of organic fertilisers and reduced chemical fertilisers.

The facilities helped him save irrigation water and labour cost for tending the farm, he said.

“Coffee planted to hi-tech farming methods is ripe evenly and has high quality, and it meets the requirements of export markets and has stable buyers,” he said.

Coffee is one of Lâm Đồng’s key plants and the province has more than 170,000ha of coffee, making it the country’s second largest coffee producer after its neighbouring province of Đắk Lắk.

The province’s Di Linh District, and Bảo Lộc and Đà Lạt cities are located 800-1,500 metres above sea level and have favourable conditions for cultivating coffee.

Farmers in the province have increased planting coffee under international standards in recent years.

They are growing 21,000ha of coffee to Rainforest standards and more than 53,000ha of coffee to the common code for the coffee community (4C).

The province’s coffee has the highest yield and quality in the country.

Coffee production value accounts for 60 per cent of the province’s agriculture production value. – VNS