The Central Highlands produces around one sixth of the world’s coffee, but farmers are switching their traditional crop for durian to cash in on surging Chinese demand for the pungent “king of fruits”.
“You can live okay with coffee, but it’s durian that makes you rich,” said Pham Xuan Lan, as he showed journalists his farm.
Blessed with a tropical climate and rich basalt soil, the lush Central Highlands produces vast quantities of robusta beans, and Vietnam trails only Brazil in coffee output.
But the area dedicated to durian has soared more than fivefold to 200,000ha nationwide over the past decade, according to the agriculture ministry.
Vietnam officially entered the Chinese durian market only after a 2022 trade protocol, but last year it became the country’s biggest supplier by volume, ending Thailand’s near two-decade dominance.
Lan was an early adopter, diversifying his crop two decades ago and now boasting 400 durian trees in Ea Knuec commune, part of Dak Lak province.
They produce 60 tonnes of the sweet yet smelly fruit, which is driven in frozen containers thousands of kilometres north into China.
The 56-year-old expects to make US$76,000 (RM306,000) this year – against US$10,000 (RM40,300) had he stayed with just coffee.
“With durian, I bought a car and houses for my children and built a villa for my family,” he said, his affluence evident around him.
Other local farmers have followed suit, focusing on the premium Ri6, Musang King and Dona varieties.
During the August-October harvest, Dak Lak’s roads are packed with trucks loaded with the spiky fruit, and at a durian festival this month, 525 vehicles formed what the Guinness World Records declared the largest ever parade of fruit-carrying vehicles.
The boom is driven by demand from China, fuelled by a combination of expanding supply and growing popularity on social media, particularly among young people.
On Douyin, China’s equivalent of TikTok, videos of users cracking open fruit with their bare hands have been watched billions of times.
“This tastes really sweet. It’s almost like it’s been coated in sugar,” said Douyin influencer Liulianzi in a clip liked more than 17,000 times.
China imported almost US$7.5bil (RM30.2bil) worth of fresh durian last year, a near 12-fold rise from 2015.
Now Beijing is seeking to boost its homegrown produce, with more than 3,000ha of plantations on the southern island province of Hainan.
But “our Hainan durians will always be just a supplement to South-East Asian durians”, acknowledged Feng Xuejie, a durian expert at the Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
“It’s not even a competition.” — AFP
