History of Cocoa in Cambodia and Vietnam
The several attempts to introduce cocoa in Cambodia and Vietnam
Indochina[edit]
The cocoa plant originates from South America. It was brought to South-East Asia by the Dutch (Indonesia, Malaysia) and the Spanish (Philippines) as from the 17th century with a reasonable succes. It was an unknown crop in Vietnam until the end of the 19th century. When Vietnam and Cambodia were a part of the Indochina colony of France (roughly the present Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos combined), there were two persons who - separately from each other - tried to introduce cocoa to Indochina.
Alexandre Yersin and the priest Gernot[edit]
The first one who gave cocoa a shot in Vietnam was the French missionary Father Gernot. The second one was the French-Swiss doctor Alexandre Yersin. It is important to note that both had limited their attempts to Vietnam, and as far as it is documented cocoa was never brought to Laos or Cambodia as a commercial crop, despite the presence of the French in both regions of Indochina. Gernot planted cocoa trees in Ben Tre but in a note from early 1907 it became clear that he was disappointed in the yield results. Apparently the initiative died a sweet death after one or two decades. Yersin tried to acclimatise many new varieties in Vietnam, not only cocoa but also coca leaf, palm oil, cassava, quinine and the most successful one of them: the Hevea, the rubber tree. All of them he tested around Nha Trang. In 1903 Vietnam exported the first rubber as latex for the Michelin company. But again, cocoa didn't become successful.
Russians and Cubans[edit]
In the late 1980’s there was another attempt to introduce cocoa, this time a combined initiative from Soviet and Cuban experts, at the same time that the Vietnamese government chose coffee as a good crop to push private ownership by small-scale farmers during the economic renovation known as Doi Moi. But where coffee became a huge success and made Vietnam in the present day the second largest coffee exporter, cocoa struggled and stopped with the collapse of the Berlin wall and the USSR itself. And because Vietnamese troops retreated from Cambodia around that same period (between 1975 and 1989), cocoa was also not able to go the opposite way into Cambodia.
Vietnam since 1997[edit]
In 1997 the World Cocoa Foundation started to promote cocoa among small-scale farmers. The Vietnamese government also stepped in with subsidised seedlings and in 2004/2005 Cargill[1] started a cacao training program with free seedlings for 12,000 small-scale farmers in Vietnam. Mars[2] also got involved and supported the cocoa farmers with their Mars Sustainable Program. Thanks to all the support, success finally came along. At this moment Vietnam already has 21,000 hectares of cocoa farming. As a result there are now also bean-to-bar chocolatiers located in Vietnam. Marou[3], Belvie[4] , Alluvia[5] and Azzan[6] to name a few.
Cambodia since 2014[edit]
As far as records show, cocoa never reached Cambodia. It took until 2014 when the Cambodian agricultural company Kamkav Farm[7] was founded. The first cocoa farm of Kamkav Farm was established in the commune Bu Sra in the largest but least populated province of Cambodia, Mondulkiri. The second farm has been set up in 2016 in the commune Sre Ampom, also in Mondulkiri. This farm also contains a small cocoa nursery. This first Cambodian cocoa initiative almost failed due to a severe drought in 2015 which struck almost the entire region from Thailand to Vietnam. Even the famous and largest, three-levels Cambodian waterfall, the Bu Sra waterfall ran dry for more than two weeks. Because of the lack of support from organisations and government in Cambodia, Kamkav Farm has seeked and received guidance and support from Mars Sustainable Vietnam and CNX Vietnam as well as from dr. Sanh La-Ongsri, Associate Professor of the horticultural department of Maejo University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Because the first Cambodian cocoa beans are only expected in 2019, there are of course currently no bean-to-bar chocolatiers known inside Cambodia.
References[edit]
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