Coffee Plant in Cambodia

Coffee is a kind of plantation imported from Europe country. It not easy to plant in the tropic country like Cambodia. But about 20 years late after many countries border with Cambodia (Vietnam, Thailand) get success of coffee plantation, the Khmer farmer was interested on coffee tree and started to plant it with big dimension farm in Mondulkiri.

On my retreat by Dec 2010, I had an opportunity to visit one of among coffee farm. It’s about 10 hectares. The farm owner say that, the coffee tree is not easy to plant. But it doesn’t mean we cannot plant it, especially in Mondulkiri where have the right weather and good land for this plantation.

The main key to get success on plantation coffee tree relating to the technical of planting. He continues that before build the farm, he has studied about technique on planting coffee tree a few months in Vietnam. Even though, the first time he planted in Cambodia, it was failed. But he tried again beside of learning more experience of plantation, how to take care of coffee tree, how to prevent and to wipe out the diseases on coffee tree.

Now his farm is quite good, he can take the yield in average of 5 to 6 tones per 1 hectare. The coffee tree will provide beans on their aged from 3 to 4 years after growing and harvest twice in a year.Talking about how to collect coffee’s beans on his farm, he smiled and said that, on harvest time it’s very busy. Usually he pay to many workers who came to pick up coffee’s beans, then dry it at least 15 days, before husking and peeling bean’s skin.

This year the price of coffee’s beans increases from 1.20 USD to 1.50 USD, the farm owners very happy with their profit. However, the farm owner continues that, this price doesn’t stable, it go up and down depend on the local market demanding as well as export to other countries.

Finally, he expect that the market of coffee’s beans will be better in next year, after there are many local industries as well as many enterprises are investing on making coffee products with high quality, and selling with reasonable price. Now the coffee product made in Mondulkiri is popular in Cambodia. Please enjoy a cup of Mondulkiri coffee. We should support products of our country.