The Cocoa Association of Asia (CAA) will provide a fund of $100,000 to assist Vietnamese farmers in southern provinces to apply best agricultural practices and improve the quality of cocoa beans under an agricultural extension agreement signed in Ho Chi Minh City yesterday. Under the agreement, the HCM City Agriculture and Forestry University will transfer the new cultivation technology to cocoa farmers in Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Ben Tre and Dong Nai provinces. The three-year project will start next month, training more than 2,000 farmers to apply cultivation methods that will help their cocoa crop gain an average yield of at least 1.5 tons per hectare. Yeong Chye, CAA chairman, said that CAA would also facilitate the farmers’ access to the international cocoa market. The yield of cocoa plants in Vietnam is currently rather low and unequal among regions because of improper cultivation methods, Phuoc said. There are about 20,000 hectares cultivating cocoa cultivation in Vietnam, mainly in the southern provinces and the Central Highlands. (Vietnam News Aug 19)
