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Ceritalah | How a Vietnam war veteran tapped into rising coffee demand to raise his family
- Nguyen Van Tuyen’s success story shows how a society scarred by decades of war has emerged with a hunger for work and prosperity
- However, the ex-soldier has one regret: none of his children are attracted to farming and wish to take over the family business
Reading Time:3 minutes
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Vietnam is the world’s second-largest coffee producer – exporting an estimated US$3.5 billion of the commodity in 2018. They are second only to Brazilians, who exported US$5.2 billion worth of coffee in the same year.
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However, in 1986, the republic managed to grow only 300,000 60kg bags of coffee beans. In 2018, volumes had skyrocketed to over 30 million bags: a hundredfold increase.
In comparison, Indonesia’s production only rose from 5.9 million bags in 1986 to just 10.2 million bags in 2018.
Property rights – anathema in most communist nations – have been critical to this expansion, with the 1986 doi moi reforms setting the stage for a major reversal of the disastrous farm collectivisation policies of the 1950s-60s.
Nguyen Van Tuyen, a 64-year-old former soldier, lives with his wife, Thang, in the coffee-growing region of Dak Lak, 360km northeast of Ho Chi Minh City. After being discharged from the military in 1979, Tuyen initially returned to his hometown, An Lao, in the north.
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