Vietnamese coffee and the plight of the montagnards.

Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, June, 2003 by Pendergrast, Mark

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

- George Santayana

"La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose [The more things change, the more they stay the same]."

- French proverb

Everyone knows that Vietnam's phenomenal growth in coffee production has had a major impact on world markets. What is not so well known is that the coffee grown in the Vietnamese Central Highlands carries with it a huge toll in human lives and environmental degradation. It all comes down to land. The indigenous Montagnards, whose ancestors farmed the fertile highlands for centuries; have been reduced to starving on inadequate plots of land and working for slave wages on large coffee farms owned by the government or Vietnamese...

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