PLEIKU, Vietnam — Vietnamese coffee growers have been hit hard this year by the worst drought in nearly a decade, raising concerns of pricier espressos across the world, even as some farmers keep yields healthy with clever countermeasures.
Domestic forecasts for next season's harvest in Vietnam, the world's second-biggest coffee producer, remain grim.
The Mercantile Exchange of Vietnam expects a 10–16 percent fall in output because of the extreme heat that hit the Central Highlands coffee region between March and early May, according to deputy head Nguyen Ngoc Quynh.
However, a return of rains in recent weeks has improved the outlook, boosting confidence among farmers and officials.
But it remains unclear whether the improved weather will help boost output and drive down prices of robusta beans, the variety most commonly found in espressos and instant coffees, of which Vietnam is the world's top producer.
"I expect the country's output to fall by 10–15 percent, but my farm will increase production," said Nguyen Huu Long, who grows coffee in a 50-hectare plantation in Gia Lai, one of the top coffee-producing provinces in Vietnam.
To protect his trees during the heat wave, he kept the soil around the plants moist by covering it with leaves. Contrary to the local practice of cutting trees after a few years to boost soil quality, he keeps his growing for decades. As a result, plants have deeper roots and broader access to underground water reserves.
Farmers in his plantation also soften the soil around plants to improve the absorption of rainwater and fertilizers, said Doan Van Thang, 39.
Tran Thi Huong, a tenant farmer who works in another plantation 20 km from Pleiku, Gia Lai's capital, resorted to using more water than usual. Thanks to abundant reserves from canals built by local authorities, she could keep her plants sufficiently irrigated during the heat wave.
Coffee cherries are smaller than in previous years, but she expects the overall output to be unaffected. It also helped that she timely intervened with biopesticides against bugs that were more numerous than usual because of the extreme weather.
That is in line with the forecast from the United States Department of Agriculture, which estimates Vietnam's next harvest would be roughly steady versus the current season's output far less pessimistic than domestic projections.
