The robusta question

In a small roastery on the outskirts of Buon Ma Thuot, a woman in her thirties pours hot water over a few grams of ground robusta and waits. She is tasting a batch from a farm two hours' drive away, picked by hand and dried slowly on raised beds. "Ten years ago people laughed when I said robusta could taste of chocolate and fruit," she says. "Now buyers in Seoul ask for it by name." Her business is tiny, but it is tied up with one of the oldest problems in Vietnamese farming.

Vietnam is the world's second-largest coffee producer after Brazil, and by far the biggest grower of robusta, the bitter, high-caffeine bean used in instant coffee and many supermarket blends. Planting expanded rapidly in the 1990s, and within a decade output had multiplied several times over. For hundreds of thousands of families in provinces such as Dak Lak, coffee became a way of life. When a global glut sent prices tumbling in the early 2000s, many growers had to sell at a loss, and some never recovered.

The deeper problem is where the money goes. Of the price a customer pays for a cup in a European café, only a small fraction reaches the person who grew the beans. Most of it is absorbed by roasting, shipping, rent, wages and, above all, branding. For decades, Vietnamese beans left the Central Highlands in sacks, were roasted and packaged elsewhere, and reached the shelves under names that said nothing about where they came from. A sack of green beans is worth far less than the same beans roasted, packed and sold under a familiar name. Growing more did little to change that, and in bad years it pushed world prices further down.

The picture has become more complicated lately. In 2024, drought in the highlands and in Brazil helped send robusta prices to record highs, and many farmers earned more than they had in years. A new generation of growers and roasters is also betting on quality: careful picking, slower drying and so-called fine robusta, a category many experts once dismissed out of hand. A booming café culture at home has taught young Vietnamese to treat their own coffee as something to be proud of. Several local chains have opened branches abroad.

None of this will transform the industry quickly. Most robusta is still sold in bulk, and some farmers have been ripping out coffee trees to plant more profitable durian. Hotter, drier seasons threaten harvests whatever their quality. Back in her roastery, the woman in Buon Ma Thuot is cautious about her own success. "High prices come and go," she says. "What I want is for a buyer to pay more because it's our coffee, not because Brazil had a bad year."