The Misconception About Vietnamese Coffee

Vietnam is the world's second-largest coffee producer, yet Vietnamese coffee often gets unfairly labelled as cheap, lower grade and quality, and requiring the addition of condensed milk to make it taste good. This perception has arisen from major corporations and traders focusing on maximizing profits through unsustainable coffee pricing and the lack of education and investment in these farms and their coffee producing capabilities.

Empowering Vietnamese Coffee Farmers for a Sustainable Future

But here's the cool part: farmers can make amazing coffee if they use new and smart ways of growing and processing the beans. The problem is that many people still think that “robusta” means bad coffee, so the farmers can get stuck in a vicious cycle of only producing lower grade coffee as that is all they believe the market demands. In a bid to improve their quality of life, a lot of farmers are selling their land to housing developers just to get by, but this means their future generations won't have farmland to continue growing coffee and has significant impacts on the environment. For example, Dalat is a coffee growing region in central Vietnam which used to be a French village during the war, and the effects can be seen throughout the impacted communities here as farms are sold off – we hope you can now see why we're super serious about changing how people see Vietnamese coffee and the impacts it can have on the country, it’s people, and the climate.

The Distinct Qualities of Arabica and Robusta Coffee

The two most common types of coffee can be divided into two sub-categories: arabica and robusta. You've likely had both species without knowing it: if you've ordered coffee at a coffee shop, you were probably sipping on arabica beans and perhaps a blend of both beans, while many instant coffee blends have been made from robusta beans.

The Rising Popularity of Robusta Coffee in the Face of Climate Change

Generally, arabica coffee is more delicate and fruity, and can be challenging to grow and sensitive to fluctuations in growing conditions and plant diseases. On the other hand, robusta tends to be heartier (more “robust”), it can grow at lower elevations, has roughly double the caffeine as arabica, and has more resistance to common coffee plant diseases. So why isn't it as popular? Robusta has been hampered by the perception of its flavour and quality in comparison to arabica. Robusta was in a lot of grocery blends you might find in cans and in instant coffee, which set the perception that it was inferior. Its reputation has become so low that many coffee brands use marketing lines like “100% arabica” to communicate that no robusta is used in efforts to better sell their coffees. Once despised and considered the “ugly sibling”, now robusta coffee, named after its strength as it thrives even in harsh conditions, has better yields, and requires less rainfall, is rising in popularity. Numerous environmental studies have come to an arrestingly dire conclusion: we're at pace to lose 50% of suitable growing areas for arabica coffee by 2050 due to climate change. Vietnam supplies over half of the world's robusta coffee and will be playing an increasingly crucial role in rescuing coffee from the impacts of the climate crisis.