Vietnam harvests first world-standard cocoa crop

This is the first tons toward the total 560 tons of UTZ-certified cocoa Vietnam plans to harvest this year as part of its UTZ Good Inside Cocoa Program.

Tran Quoc Vuong, Director of Cargill Vietnam’s cocoa purchasing program, said more and more local growers would switch to world standard practices now that UTZ-certified cocoa are fetching much higher prices on the market.

The price for UTZ certified cocoa is around 64.4 million dong (US$3,083.5) per ton, 2 million dong ($95.7) higher than uncertified products.

At the present, however, only 670 hectares of the 5,000 hectares of cocoa to be harvested countrywide this year are UTZ-certified.

Vietnam’s cocoa plantations, totaling 16,000 hectares, are located mainly in the southern provinces of Ben Tre and Ba Ria-Vung Tau and the Central Highlands provinces of Dak Lak and Dak Nong. – Tuoitre

Tags: Vietnam Cocoa

Posted by VBN on Feb 25 2011. Filed under Agriculture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry