'Winners and losers': The world of coffee is being reordered by EU laws to stop cutting of forests
Le Van Tam is no stranger to how the vagaries of global trade can determine the fortunes of small coffee farmers like him.
He first planted coffee in a patch of land outside Buon Ma Thuot city in Vietnam's Central Highland region in 1995. For years, his focus was on quantity, not quality. Tam used ample amounts of fertilizer and pesticides to boost his yields, and global prices determined how well he did.
Then, in 2019, he teamed up with Le Dinh Tu of Aeroco Coffee, an organic exporter to and the U.S., and adopted more sustainable methods, turning his coffee plantation (field) into a a sun-dappled forest. The coffee grows side-by-side with tamarind trees that add nitrogen to the soil and provide support for black pepper vines. helps keep the soil moist and the
