The development of coffee in Laos

The coffee history of Laos can be traced back to 100 years ago. At that time, France was the colonial ruler of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and they began to experiment with growing various crops in these areas. Coffee quickly flourished among farmers in Vietnam and Laos: Robusta Coffee, the most profitable agricultural crop after opium, was booming.

Arabica coffee also began to develop at that time, but now it has become unknown compared with Robusta coffee. Most of the green coffee beans are shipped to Vietnam and France, and the rest are baked locally. They roasted over the fire by mixing coffee beans with sugar and a little local brandy.

Laos did not join the coffee consortium of Brazil or Vietnam because of production and export volume. The planting area of coffee in Laos is only 0.25% of that in the world. Laos rarely produces more than 15000 tons of coffee a year, which cannot be compared with Vietnam's annual output of 900000 tons.

There are many differences between Laos coffee and Vietnamese coffee. First of all, all the coffees are almost the same in quality and appearance, as if they come from the same place: the Boloven plateau in southern Laos. Laos now exports green and roasted coffee to France, Germany and Poland. Some Laotian coffee began to enter the American market in its own way. Japanese market development is also under way. Quality remains an important indicator: at a recent meeting in Vietnam co-organized by the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and the Japanese Department of International Economics, Hunla Manivon, Vice President of the Lao Coffee Export Federation, stressed: "Laos lacks a standard system for quality management." This remains an important obstacle to coffee export transactions between Laos and Japan. This is not the quality of the coffee beans themselves. According to the French CIRAD Coffee Research Center, Laos coffee beans are one of the best in the world. Laos does not have a set of effective and standard coffee bean growing areas or other grading standards. In fact, this is a management problem, which has nothing to do with the quality of the coffee beans themselves.

Today, about 23000 families in Laos depend on growing coffee to survive. 29 companies in the Export Federation export more than 10000 tons of Lao coffee each year. The incidental products of coffee exports will increase in the coming years. The main export of Arabica coffee rose to half of the export value from 14500 tons last year.