Dak Lak produces coffee adapting to climate change

Dak Lak province has directed farmers and businesses to build technical systems in coffee production and trading to proactively respond to climate change in order to limit risks and damages to producers.

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The demand for water for coffee in the dry season is very large when 1ha of coffee needs water from 1,600 to 1,700m ³ . While in the past few years, climate change in Vietnam in general and Dak Lak in particular has become more and more obvious, causing surface water and groundwater resources to decline seriously. In the last 5 years alone, Dak Lak province has been drought frequently in the dry season, causing tens of thousands of hectares of coffee to be drought, killing trees or reducing productivity, and some years have lost from 30 to 50% productivity, causing great damage to farmers.

Facing this situation, Dak Lak province has re-planned the coffee area, instructing the farmers to change the area of ​​coffee in areas where the water source is not active, in areas with slopes of 15 degrees or more to plant trees. Other crops have higher economic efficiency.

Harvesting coffee.(Photo: baodaklak.vn)

The province also instructs farmers, businesses to determine the best time for watering and to follow the water saving procedure properly with the amount of water needed for coffee trees from 400 to 600 liters of water / tree / 1 irrigation.

Dak Lak also recommends that farmers and enterprises apply better techniques to fertilize soil fertility to save fertilizer costs from 8 to 10% (equivalent to 700,000 to 1 million VND / ha), use new high-yield and drought-tolerant coffee varieties to plant and apply acoustical planting techniques, forest belt plantings, shade shading, root compartments for moisturizing, shaping, making plant residue presses for coffee plants approved for drought resistance.

In particular, Dak Lak province has replicated the models of diversifying crops in coffee gardens by intercropping long-term commodity crops such as avocado, durian, pepper, jackfruit . Right this rainy season, farmers, coffee production and business enterprises have intercropped more than 1,000 ha.

In fact, growing coffee alternating perennial commodity crops in households in Cu M'gar, Krong Buk, Krong Nang, Krong Pak and Cu Kuin districts not only helps growers increase their income from 20 to 50% compared to pure coffee cultivation, but also improve the climatic conditions in the gardens, improve soil fertility, limit erosion and leaching, increase soil organic matter content. from 24 to 26%.

According to scientists, the diversification of crops in coffee gardens also contributes to maintaining sustainable development. The intercropping trees also work as shade trees and windbreakers, thus limiting the development, spreading pests and diseases, reducing the pressure of irrigation water in the dry season for coffee gardens.

Currently, Dak Lak province has over 200,000 hectares of coffee, including 195,000 hectares of coffee business for product harvest with an annual output of 430,000 tons of green coffee or more. However, the area of ​​coffee planted with shade trees and intercropping trees in the province is still very low, only 32% of the coffee area.