WB-funded Project Trains 22,854 Households in Vietnam on Coffee Replantation

The Vietnam Sustainable Agriculture Transformation Project (VnSAT) on coffee plantation, which is funded by the World Bank (WB), has so far trained 22,854 farming households in Vietnam’s Central Highlands on replanting 22,047 hectares of coffee trees, state media reported. To date, 20,487 households have replanted 18,112 hectares of coffee trees under the project, the state-run newswire Nong Nghiep Vietnam (Vietnam Agriculture) said. Besides, the project has trained 1,000 individuals/units on coffee plantlet production, 350 others on coffee plantlet arboretum certification, 2,000 on disease management, and 3,200 on land fertility. So far, 51 arboretums have met standards under the project, with a total of 5.1 million plantlets, which are enough for the replantation on 5,000 hectares of coffee. In addition, five localities in the region have had 41,451 hectares of land applied with advanced watering technologies, which surpassed the project’s target by 88%. The project has also supported the construction of irrigation projects, 34 warehouses with a combined capacity of 9,848 tons, 1,387 square meters of dryer proofs and eight dryers with a total capacity of 60 tons/turn, and other facilities. As of early 2019, all $50.18 million capital of the project had been disbursed. So far, 200,759 people have benefited from the project, equal to 91.3% of the target. The areas of coffee with advanced farming technologies have reached 49,403 hectares, equivalent to 98.8% of the target. The VnSAT project, part of the World Bank’s country partnership strategy, is implemented in five Central Highlands provinces and separately eight Mekong Delta localities (for rice production) from 2015 to 2020 with a total capital of over $300 million, of which $230 million comes from the bank’s preferential loans. (Nong Nghiep Viet Nam, nongnghiep.vn)