The price of G7 coffee, a historical brand growing coffee beans in Vietnam.

The price of G7 coffee, a historical brand growing coffee beans in Vietnam.

Nhan graduated in 1967 and returned to Vietnam to start working at the PhuQuy Rainforest Agricultural Research Station (PhuQuayTropicalCropResearchStation) in Nghe. The Tropical Rainforest Agricultural Research Station, a research organization under the Department of Agriculture, went on to work with the Vietnamese government to devise plans for how to rebuild war-torn Vietnam. Vietnam had a population of about 70 million at that time and most of the people needed to work. The Vietnamese government quickly identified two main reconstruction priorities, education and work. "the government asked everyone to come up with a product that could help society grow," Nhan recalled. "I had studied all the rain forest products when I was studying in China, so I began to look for products that could be produced locally and exported. Coffee is an advantageous product because we have many countries to cooperate with, and there are a lot of basalt laterite in the country, and the only thing that is lacking is agricultural manpower. " "We also know that we need a lot of educators to rebuild the country after the war, but the question is what if young people don't want to stay in school," Nhan added. "Schools and universities continue to open during the war."

As the front line of the war moved south, Nhan began to focus on Yi'an Province in the north-central part of the country. He began to visit coffee farms left in the province during the French colonial period, and Nhan became convinced that coffee would play an important role in Vietnam's future economic growth. Nhan felt that the development of coffee beans to become high-yielding agricultural products would be the focus of social development. "We cannot rely on outsiders to help rebuild Vietnam, and we need to help create better opportunities for people of more than 70 different local tribes in the province."

The original goal of Nhan's development plan was to allow Vietnam to produce 6 to 7 million packets of 60-kilogram coffee beans to compete with Indonesia, the largest coffee producer in Asia and the third largest coffee producer in the world at the time. Indonesia had export quotas at that time, but Vietnam did not. Therefore, the production of coffee in Vietnam is monitored according to the demand of other socialist countries, so that Vietnamese coffee beans can have a better trading price.

When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Nhan visited the central highlands of southern Vietnam, where he made more plans to start growing coffee. In mid-1980, the Vietnamese government began planning to grow Arabica coffee, but this time the planting area is focused on poor and remote areas of the north, where there are local minorities. We started growing Arabica coffee beans in the Sonla area in 1989, and I am very pleased to see today how coffee cultivation has improved the lives of their local people. "some farmers in Sonla can own about 1000 hectares of farmland, and they can use the money earned from coffee to build new houses or buy new motorcycles," Nhan said. It is hard to deny that it is a good plan for the Vietnamese government to use coffee cultivation to improve the social environment. In 2012, there were more than 1 million people doing coffee-related jobs across the country, including farmers and workers. And together with the income of all coffee-related industries, it could improve the lives of about 3 million Vietnamese.