INTRODUCTION In 2008, the Cao Nguyen Xanh (CNX) Joint Stock Company was founded by a group of agricultural experts who commit to the development of the young Vietnamese cocoa industry towards sustainability and high quality. Our mission is to help farmers Get Rid of Anxiety by using our products and services. The establishment of a high quality sustainable cocoa industry must start with good planting materials. Thoroughly understanding this, CNX has invested its resources to produce state of the art cocoa seedlings to provide to farmers. Located in the heart of the Vietnamese Central Highlands (CH), Buon Ma Thuot city, Dak Lak province - CNX owns the most modern - largest cocoa nursery in Vietnam and the only certified cocoa bud wood garden in CH that consists of all approved cocoa varieties by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. In 2010, we distributed out more than 600,000 state of the art cocoa seedlings and in 2011, we are scaling up to 1,000,000 seedlings to reach our full capacity. CNX doesn t merely sell seedlings but provide comprehensive solutions to cocoa farmers. Farmers who bought our seedlings were organized into cocoa clubs. CNX is providing to these clubs trainings with best practices from new...

Since 2008, CNX has been implementing its plan for establishing cocoa material production area through the establishment of productive partnerships with farmers. Toghether with its partners, CNX has been working with excellent farmers in Dak Lak province of Vietnamese Central Highlands to establish cocoa clubs with farmers who have desires to grow cocoa as an intercropping crop under cashew canopy in a sustainable manner. CNX s concept that through a close working relationship between farmers and enterprises, farmers will be benefit from receiving quality seedlings, training and bean quality management programs of CNX as well as cost savings from collective buying for input materials. Thus, the competitiveness of farmers will improve and enable them to take the opportunity of entering the new potential cocoa industry as well as accessing to new markets. Vice versa, CNX will be benefit from having a sustainable, high and consistent quality cocoa material production area....

One of typical features of cocoa production is that harvested wet beans need to be fermented. The fermenting and drying processes have large impacts to cocoa bean quality. In the world, the price difference between fermented and unfermented beans fluctuates from 200 to 600 USD/MT.

 

Cocoa production in Vietnam is mainly at small farmer households. It is ineffective if every farmer do fermentation by themselves since in order to do fermentation, farmers need to invest for facilities and likely, those facilities will not be fully utilized. Furthermore, if every farmer do fermentation by themselves, the quality of beans will not be consistent.