The seventh Buon Ma Thuot coffee festival will be held in March in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak with a wide range of activities featuring local specialties, including locally produced coffee beans.
Themed “Quintessence of the Great Forest”, the biennial festival will take place from March 9-16 with diverse programmes.
Speaking at a press conference held on Tuesday in Buon Ma Thuot, Nguyen Tuan Ha, vice chairman of the province people’s committee, who is deputy head of the festival’s organising board, said the Central Highlands region has great potential for coffee plantations and exports.
“Cultivation of coffee trees is the main livelihood of farmers in the Central Highlands,” he said. “The Buon Ma Thuot coffee festival plays an essential role in promoting the trademark Buon Ma Thuot coffee and Viet Nam’s coffee to the international market.”
The Central Highlands province of Dak Lak boasts the country’s largest coffee-growing area, with a total area of about 204,000 hectares, producing 460,000 tonnes of coffee beans annually, accounting for 36 per cent of the country’s total output, according to Ha.
Coffee from Dak Lak is exported to some 100 countries and territories.
The province will organise the 2019 Dak Lak conference to call for investment in agriculture, the processing industry, renewable energy, and infrastructure for tourism and urban areas, he said.
Miss Universe Viet Nam 2017 H’Hen Nie, who is the media ambassador of the festival, will participate in major programmes at the festival.
“It’s my great honour to be the ambassador of the festival to promote the brand of Buon Ma Thuot coffee and Vietnamese coffee in the international market,” she said.
The festival will feature a diverse range of activities, including an opening and closing ceremony, and a seminar on the development of Vietnamese specialty coffee.
There will also be an exhibition on global coffee history, a street festival, a Vietnamese specialty coffee quality competition, free coffee tasting, a Buon Don elephant festival, and an international paragliding contest.
The event aims to promote Buon Ma Thuot coffee brand, develop specialty coffee, and gradually turn Buon Ma Thuot city into a destination for coffee aficionados worldwide.
It also aims to honour domestic coffee growers, processors and traders while encouraging the community to join hands to develop the coffee culture.
The event commemorates the 44th anniversary of the Buon Ma Thuot Victory (March 10, 1975 - March 10, 2019).
Buon Ma Thuot is home to some of the finest coffee in Viet Nam. Coffee was first cultivated in Viet Nam in 1857. Viet Nam’s coffee growing area has reached 20,000ha. The country exports 1.8 million tonnes of coffee beans, raking in $3.2 billion per year.
Viet Nam is the world’s second largest coffee exporter, after Brazil. — VNS