Vietnamese Robusta needs a data passport to conquer international markets

For Vietnamese Robusta, data from coffee-growing areas is no longer a technical detail. It is becoming a condition for keeping access to export markets.

Vietnam has more than 720,000 hectares of coffee, and Robusta accounts for about 95% of the area. Production is concentrated in the Central Highlands and parts of the southeastern region. In the 2024-25 crop year, Vietnam exported more than 1.5 million tons of coffee worth over $8.4 billion. The European Union’s 27 countries accounted for about 40.1% of export volume and 39.4% of export value. During the first six months of 2026, exports reached about 1.07 million tons and generated roughly $4.89 billion.

Nguyễn Thành Tài, a member of the Vietnam Coffee-Cocoa Association’s executive committee, said the country has already built parts of the required information base. Some local authorities hold data on land and planted areas. Companies, cooperatives and certification programs such as 4C, Rainforest Alliance and organic schemes have collected details on farmers, acreage, coordinates and cultivation records. Major exporters are also digitizing supply areas for traceability.

The weakness lies in fragmentation and uneven quality. Vietnam still lacks a unified, publicly available national dataset showing how much coffee-growing land has complete records, how much has verified boundaries, and how much can be checked against forest maps and linked to individual export lots. The challenge is therefore not simply whether data exists. It must also be complete, verified, updated and usable in transactions.

Tài distinguished a growing-area code from full growing-area data. A code identifies a crop on one or more plots, but a complete traceability system also needs producer information, plot coordinates or boundaries, legal records, cultivation logs, output, purchase transactions and the export-lot code. Without those links, a code alone cannot prove the origin of the coffee. Exporters must increasingly show not only the quality of the beans, but also where and how they were produced.