- 2 days ago
Traces the global journey of one of the world's most consumed beverages, exposing the harsh realities, environmental impact, and economic struggles behind the morning cup
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00:06in Britain we drink almost 500 million cups of coffee every week how much do
00:11we really know about where our coffee comes from I'm on a journey from the
00:16fields to the factories to uncover the surprising stories behind our morning
00:24pick me up you've got a Bentley coffee shops now sell lattes and cappuccinos on
00:32almost every British high street but we've loved cheaper instant coffee for
00:36decades you know if you want the best coffee taste you need the best blend of
00:40the best beans producing instant coffee to fill our cups is having a huge impact
00:44there were up to 2,000 wild elephants in Vietnam there's now just a few dozen left
00:49on my journey I discover how our humble cup of coffee has helped transform the
00:54fortunes of a nation thank you very much I work hard for this I'm following the
01:02coffee trail
01:21now wait a minute
01:32I bet if you ask most Brits where their coffee comes from they wouldn't say here I'm in Vietnam
01:39when you think of coffee you usually think of Brazil Jamaica or Colombia oh goodness me
01:46the first stop on my coffee trail is Hanoi the capital city in the north of Vietnam
01:52I'm gonna go left here I think
01:57the streets here the roads anyway they're clogged with mad motorcyclists
02:04psychopathic scooter drivers and suicidal cyclists
02:10there are more than 90 million people in Vietnam and you seem to be in my way
02:18what are you doing madam what are you doing
02:24Vietnam is the number one supplier of coffee to the UK and one of the largest coffee producers in the
02:29world
02:31time I think for quick coffee coffee shop another coffee shop there's another one ahead coffee shops everywhere here
02:43the Vietnamese grow huge quantities of coffee and now drink it by the gallon
02:50but they like a very particular brew
02:58the Vietnamese version of a cappuccino wasn't quite what I was expecting
03:03I think the joke is on me
03:05don't order a coffee chung they said
03:08what is a coffee chung is the question I did not ask
03:15are there eggs in this coffee coffee
03:18cafe chung is an egg coffee
03:22that's just not right
03:25at least it wasn't another speciality here
03:27coffee beans extracted from weasel droppings
03:30eggy coffee
03:41that's delicious
03:42thank you
03:43really good
03:44I think we need to get on a journey
03:46and find out where this Vietnamese coffee is being made
03:5330 years ago less than 0.1 percent of global coffee production came from Vietnam
03:58but in just a few decades this country's transformed itself into one of the world's leading coffee producers
04:09of course they drink coffee in the capital but they don't grow it here
04:12and to see that I need to head south
04:18thank you
04:26I see you
04:27see you
04:27okay
04:28well it's alright
04:30you've got a bit of air conditioning which
04:32well to be honest I'm quite relieved about
04:35Oh and a lovely floral display. I can feel the train powering up underneath me so
04:46we're just about to leave. It's exciting!
04:54I'll tell you what, they're dead on time. 11 o'clock.
05:09The story of coffee in Vietnam goes back more than a hundred years.
05:16Coffee was first introduced by the French in the 19th century.
05:21Vietnam was part of a colony known as French Indochina which also included Cambodia and Laos.
05:31The French ruled Vietnam for almost 70 years from the late 1800s.
05:38They milked the country for anything they could extract, earning vast fortunes.
05:43Colonial rule could be brutal. Vietnamese workers toiled in the fields to produce rubber, tea, rice and coffee.
05:52French rule finally came to an end in the 1950s after a communist uprising in the north drove them
05:58from the country. The conflict claimed tens of thousands of lives.
06:13In 1954 a peace conference resulted in the country being partitioned with a communist government in north
06:20Vietnam and an American-backed regime in the south. But a new and even more bloody war loomed.
06:36I travelled 400 miles south from the capital. It was time to head up into the hills.
06:44Coffee is grown here on a vast scale.
06:47Look there! Coffee! We've arrived in coffee country.
06:58This is one of the areas of Vietnam where they grow our coffee. Coffee for us. And a few other
07:05countries.
07:16The cow's spooked. It's off.
07:22I think you'll find the cow is a bull, son.
07:26I was visiting the village of Hung Son.
07:30We've arrived!
07:33The coffee industry in Vietnam now provides a livelihood for millions of people.
07:38Mostly around small farms like this of just a few acres.
07:43Across the country farmers like Ho Bon produce a staggering million and a half tons of coffee.
07:49It's a key export for the country and our number one source of coffee in Britain.
07:55These are all the coffee on the plant here. Look at this. This is ready to pick.
08:01Let's go, okay. Let's go pick some coffee.
08:12Do you take everything off or just the...
08:19Okay, so just the red. All right, okay.
08:29What's wrong with that?
08:31Oh, he's shaking his head.
08:35That specifically is what you're after.
08:38None of this...
08:41Coffee is one of the most valuable traded goods on earth.
08:44Globally, the industry is worth more than 40 billion pounds.
08:49It's the single most important tropical commodity traded worldwide, accounting for nearly half of total exports of tropical products.
08:57Why do you choose coffee as the plant, as the crop that you grow? Why not something else?
09:15No, coffee is more work. It's harder work, but you can make more money from it.
09:26So coffee is more work, it's harder work, but you can make more money from it.
09:37This is the coffee fruit, I suppose, and inside it's the rather crucial coffee bean.
09:47Tastes like a sour grape, but from it you get this.
09:52You can see the line through it, can't you, which indicates the coffee.
09:59And you get two, obviously, in one fruit.
10:06Bon, do you think I might have a future as one of your coffee pickers?
10:09Because I've got some uses, you know, I'm quite lanky, so I can get to the very top of the
10:15plant
10:15and pick off the cherries, the fruits from there.
10:25That could be a problem, I must admit.
10:29The villagers here wear uniforms left over from what we call the Vietnam War.
10:35It was the conflict that still defines Vietnam today.
10:40In 1965, American combat troops were deployed to support the South Vietnamese government,
10:45which was facing a guerrilla campaign by communist forces.
10:50Their duty will be strictly defensive, but they will shoot back if attacked.
10:55Marines usually do.
10:57Within a few years, America had more than half a million troops on the ground engaged in a full-scale
11:03war.
11:07An hour away from the village is Khe San,
11:09once a key American air base and the site of one of the most important battles of the Vietnam War.
11:21Vernon Gok Vu is a guide who's been showing visitors around the battlefield for more than 10 years.
11:27The U.S. dropped in total about 100,000 bombs on the surrounding hills of Khe San on the North
11:35Vietnamese Army position,
11:37suspected North Vietnamese Army position. That's the most concentrated bombing in the history of warfare.
11:43The most concentrated period of bombing ever?
11:46Yeah.
11:47So in the, well, in this valley, effectively, and in the, on the hills around here?
11:53Yeah.
11:53Yeah.
11:57In 1968, communist North Vietnamese forces attacked the American air base.
12:05U.S. Marines were cut off, and the U.S. Air Force responded with overwhelming force.
12:18thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died, along with hundreds of Americans.
12:32Look at the size of this.
12:35Is this the biggest type of bomb the Americans dropped on the positions around here?
12:40No, not really. The biggest one is, uh, is that ten times bigger, heavier than this one, 15,000 pounds.
12:48This one is-
12:49Ten times heavier?
12:50Yeah, this one, yeah, this one, uh, this one is 1,500 pounds.
12:54This was what was pouring out of the skies, then, onto the North Vietnamese positions.
13:00Yeah, it was raining in the North Vietnamese.
13:01Raining from the sky, yes.
13:04Coffee, uh, planters, instead have a lot of problems from the unexploded islands around Khe San.
13:09So there are still bombs like this, buried in the ground, not quite tick-ticking, but just waiting for a
13:18farmer with a, or a tractor with a plow to go over the top of them and potentially set them
13:24off.
13:24Yeah, exactly.
13:26Is it, is it safe to walk around here? Are there any unexploded bombs in the ground?
13:31It is a safe inside the Khe San combat base. Now, actually, it's, it's a tourist attraction, so it was
13:39cleared.
13:40Right.
13:40It's a safe.
13:41But if you wander around, walking around outside the perimeter of Khe San, it's still dangerous.
13:46There's still lots of unexploded landmine ordnance up there.
13:49Really?
13:50Yeah. And, uh, Quang Tri province alone, it's, uh, an estimated between 80, 83 percent of land is still being
13:57affected with the unexploded ordnance.
14:04The war ended nearly 40 years ago, but this area is still desperately poor.
14:10Growing coffee is a major source of income here.
14:13The need to put food on the table drives people to take chances and work in the fields, despite the
14:20risks posed by unexploded bombs.
14:23Hello. Hello.
14:27Like most Vietnamese, 18-year-old Ho Verny was born long after the war ended.
14:35Growing coffee is the only thing we do around here. We grow coffee.
14:39I don't plant other crops like rubber trees.
14:43All of my friends, they grow coffee, so I grow coffee as well.
14:49But for the past year, he has been unable to work on his farm.
14:54E, can you tell us what, what happened to you?
14:59I was digging in the ground to plant coffee.
15:03I'd gone to work very early and I was clearing away grass and digging holes.
15:08As I was digging a hole, there was an explosion.
15:12I was knocked unconscious and I can't remember anything else.
15:18When I came around, I realised I was in the hospital.
15:25I kept thinking of my parents. I was scared I was going to die.
15:32Did you have any idea that there might be explosives or bombs or mines still in the ground in that
15:41field?
15:44Yes. One person had already been killed.
15:50Why are there people still working there?
15:55We're very poor and we don't have enough rice to eat.
16:05I find it astonishing, but more than a hundred thousand Vietnamese have been killed or injured
16:11by an exploded bomb since the end of the conflict.
16:17For rural populations like this, wars rarely end when peace treaties are signed.
16:24Modern weaponry lives long in the soil, claiming thousands of lives globally every year.
16:36Since we left, he has at last been fitted for a prosthetic leg.
16:41But thousands of other maimed villagers and farmers across Vietnam have yet to receive help.
17:00It's a very difficult time.
17:03Following America's defeat and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975,
17:08North and South Vietnam were unified under a communist government.
17:11North and South Vietnam was a very difficult time.
17:19After years of devastating conflict, the country was in economic ruin.
17:23Coffee was to play a key role in its eventual recovery.
17:28I headed south towards the main coffee growing region.
17:37A few hours into our journey, the weather began to turn.
17:42We'd driven straight into a huge tropical cyclone.
17:48We've just stopped by the side of the road because now we really see the power,
17:52the destructive force of the cyclone.
17:55The sea is flooding in, inundating people's homes down here.
18:01Cyclone Nari was causing widespread damage in central Vietnam.
18:0716 people had been killed or were missing.
18:11Look at this.
18:1350,000 homes had been destroyed or flooded.
18:17It was the worst cyclone in years.
18:19Look at the tree here.
18:22Scientists report the weather here is becoming more extreme and unpredictable.
18:27It's a consequence of global climate change.
18:30The cyclones that are hitting Vietnam are becoming stronger and more powerful.
18:36If you're a coffee farmer, say, this is devastating.
18:43As the storm subsided, I continued south.
18:55My journey had taken me through some of Vietnam's remoter regions,
18:59which tourists and TV crews rarely enter.
19:02And foreigners who do require extra permits to turn off main roads.
19:09When we'd strayed off our route,
19:11we'd been stopped by the police and had to beat a hasty retreat.
19:18Okay, so it looked like the police were going to stop us or even arrest us there,
19:23but I think we've just driven off away from them.
19:26They're not following.
19:26They might have decided we're just more problems than we're worth.
19:33Vietnam is still an authoritarian, one-party communist state.
19:39Political opposition is suppressed and there's little freedom of speech.
19:45Our filming here is being controlled and restricted to a degree.
19:49We also have a government-approved minder who's traveling with us.
19:54We're going to have to be careful about what we film, who we talk to and what we ask.
20:05The history of coffee production is one of the most sensitive issues here because it involved
20:10blanketing this region with coffee farms, human rights abuses and the mass movement of millions
20:16of people.
20:21I visited Nguyenhu Phong, one of the newcomers.
20:24He has a small holding of three hectares.
20:26Hello, mate. I'm Simon. Nice to meet you.
20:34Is this all your coffee around us?
20:41Let's go and have a look. Thank you.
20:43Hello.
20:45Goodness me. So what, you're collecting up the beans now.
20:48It's harvest time.
20:50Do you want me to hold it?
20:51Yes.
20:55Come on then.
20:57Oh goodness, no, you haven't finished.
20:59You're going to pull all those berries off.
21:01So, how long have you been here? And why did you come?
21:13So you're not from this area then?
21:41What was this land like when you first arrived here?
21:45Was it a coffee farm already?
21:47When I came here, the area was all rừng, le, and lửa.
21:50The agriculture used to cut the machine and cut the machine.
21:54The agriculture used to cut the machine.
21:55The agriculture used to cut the machine.
21:58The agriculture used to cut the machine.
22:01What was the hardest part for you of establishing a life and a farm here?
22:09What did your wife think was the toughest part?
22:20I want to see the hands. Let me see the hands here.
22:27All right, these have got some rough, these have done some hard work, haven't they?
22:31But look at these, you're doing the hard work really, aren't you?
22:36You're doing the hard work really, aren't you?
22:41After the end of the Vietnam War, the communist government started huge collective farms here.
22:47They weren't a great success.
22:50Nobody on the collective farms had much of an incentive to work hard and corruption was rampant.
22:56People were going hungry and the country wasn't making much money from its crops.
23:00Eventually, the government realised they had to do something.
23:05The crucial year is 1986. That's when the Vietnamese Communist Party had a major meeting.
23:12They realised the economy was in a terrible state and they decided to relax the rules and,
23:17among other things, start growing and exporting coffee on a massive scale.
23:23The state-planned collective farms were swept away. Half a million small holdings emerged in their place.
23:30And in the 1990s, coffee production grew at a staggering 30% per year.
23:47Like that?
23:50Oh, I am. I'm so strong, so strong.
23:53Phuong and his family are part of the massive migration of more than three million people
23:59who've come here from other parts of the country to farm coffee and other crops.
24:23The equipment here is still low tech and often creaking.
24:27But small farms like this have been crucial to this country's rapid economic growth.
24:37So, this is what it's all about. The next stage from here is to sell this on to a wholesaler.
25:04Coffee, coffee, coffee. It's everywhere here.
25:08You look at the communities around here as well. And where they're poor, you've got,
25:13look here for example, electricity, satellite dishes on both houses here.
25:18This is a very poor country still, but it was a lot poorer 20, 30 years ago.
25:27Things are changing. Things are improving.
25:30In 1994, 60% of Vietnamese lived below the poverty line. Now it's less than 10%.
25:36Here we are, I think. Judging by the way they're crossing this dual carriageway.
25:55But Vietnam's coffee industry has its problems. Coffee grown on the small farms is often poor quality.
26:02Farmers occasionally even bulk up the weight of their coffee sacks by chucking in stones and bolts.
26:24And the deal has been done. Is that my pay for the day? Thank you very much.
26:30I worked hard for this. So you've got about 650 pounds here.
26:51It's yours after all. And thank you for letting me see this part of the process.
26:55Yes. You might be drinking some of Farmer Fung's coffee by now.
26:59Come madam.
27:00Like most Vietnamese farmers, he grows one specific type of bean to make a specific type of coffee.
27:07All of this coffee, in fact almost all of the coffee that's produced in Vietnam,
27:12is a type of coffee called Robusta. Robusta coffee is quite a hardy plant,
27:17but it's quite a low quality one as well. It goes into making instant coffee.
27:22A lot of other countries that produce coffee churn out Arabica coffee,
27:26which is a more valuable coffee. It goes to make the more expensive stuff,
27:29things like espressos, which you can be charged a fortune for in a high street coffee shop.
27:35But here in Vietnam, they make the cheap stuff.
27:39Instant coffee made largely from Robusta beans accounts for nearly 80% of the coffee we drink in Britain.
27:46Our love affair with the instant stuff really took off in the 1970s and 80s.
27:53Now that's what I call a cup of coffee.
27:55Of course. It's New Maxwell House.
27:58That's why Nescafe is made from a blend of three types of the finest coffee beans in the world.
28:03And there are about this many beans in every cup.
28:07Communist Vietnam's coffee boom was partly fed by the middle class aspirations of 1980s Britain.
28:16Oh, lovely coffee.
28:18Red Mountain. It's like ground coffee taste without the grind.
28:24When instant coffee landed on supermarket shelves, consumption of coffee rocketed around the world.
28:32In Britain, we now drink twice as much of the stuff as we did in the 70s.
28:38One of the best places to see the impact of our coffee boom is the city of Bon Matup, Vietnam's
28:44coffee capital.
28:49Coffee's made some people here very rich.
28:54Coffee's made some people here.
28:56Coffee's made some people here.
28:57Coffee's made some people here.
28:58Chairman Vue, you've got a Bentley.
29:03Of course you have a Bentley.
29:05You're a rich chap.
29:08You like your cars, Chairman Vue.
29:14So come on, what cars have you got then? Tell us.
29:21Ten Ferraris? So you've had many good years when you look at the finances then?
29:30You have five Bentleys?
29:33That's why I bought a plane to move back in the area.
29:39Oh, I left my neck.
29:43Actually, I'm very grateful for this.
29:47You can see it from a very low point.
29:53If it's over, I can say that we can become a million dollars.
30:00Dang Le Noyen Vu is known as Vietnam's coffee king.
30:04He was one of the first to see the potential of the business.
30:07He's made a fortune from exporting beans to countries like Britain,
30:11as well as founding his own international chain of coffee shops.
30:17Accompanied by an escort of Jeeps, Chairman Vu, as he's known, showed me around some of his empire.
30:29Goodness me, it's quite the entourage, isn't it?
30:33He's even built a multi-million pound coffee village, a shrine to his beloved bean.
30:56At the centre of the complex are some exhibits highlighting Vu's own very personal philosophy.
31:06What? Who have you got here, Chairman Vu? And why have you got them here?
31:12These statues are of my top 100 people, people who've shaped the history of the world.
31:18Are they people you personally identify with or you would like to be like?
31:27Both. I'd like to be one of the people who changes the world, but also I learn from their core
31:32values.
31:37For instance, Napoleon.
31:42His talent in military strategy is the best in the world. No one can rival him.
31:52If you take coffee, it's a stimulant for the brain.
32:00The rich countries of the world all drink a lot of coffee. Take your own country.
32:05The moment you shift from drinking coffee to drinking tea, the country slows down.
32:13This is a shocking thing to say. We drink both in Britain. We love our tea and we drink quite
32:20a lot of coffee as well.
32:22Are you suggesting that if we only drank coffee, we would be a more creative country?
32:30For me, coffee is a treasure. Coffee is the heritage of mankind.
32:34It's the solution for the future. And I don't think that's an exaggeration.
32:43Chairman Vu has big plans.
32:45He wants to take Vietnam's coffee, which we in Britain just use for cheaper instant coffee,
32:50and sell it internationally as a proper expensive drink in its own right.
32:55It's an acquired taste, but I liked it.
32:58It's really good.
33:01You want us to drink more of this, don't you? You want to try and sell this around the world?
33:07Yes. We want to bring Vietnamese coffee culture to the world.
33:11So is your plan to try and expand into Europe, into North America?
33:16Are we going to see Chairman Vu's coffee shops opening in the UK?
33:22It isn't going to be easy. But in the next year, we want to compete with the big brands like
33:28Starbucks.
33:36If we can take on and win over the US market, we can conquer the whole world.
33:43Is that the plan? Conquer the whole world?
33:47That's my goal.
34:15A poultry person believes you want to invest in a profitable pool in Italy for resistance and alloying.
34:17Come make your, when you're where Dom, what mess up?
34:18For this whole world you'll eat a little fat.
34:18And !!!
34:21Two and a half million people in Vietnam are employed in the coffee industry.
34:26They grow it, they pack it, they ship it.
34:31Selling you coffee feeds their families and helps educate their children.
34:35In many parts of the country, growing coffee is the only industry.
34:40But problems are looming.
34:46Dave Dehays is a Belgian soil and water conservation scientist, living in Vietnam, who is an expert on the coffee
34:52industry.
34:53Dave, is the way that the Vietnamese are farming coffee at the moment sustainable?
34:59I don't think so. It's a very interesting question because actually, different to any other project we do in the
35:06world,
35:07where we are trying to help farmers to increase productivity,
35:12here we have to tell farmers, please, reduce water amounts, reduce fertilizer amounts,
35:18and still your production will be one of the highest in the world.
35:22So they're overusing fertilizer and they're overusing scarce water resources?
35:27Absolutely, yes.
35:28Why?
35:30Well, there is this traditional belief that, yeah, you need to do that,
35:34and nobody has really been trained on how to produce coffee.
35:38Sometimes I'm saying, look, every farmer in Vietnam is the researcher of his own plot.
35:45I really said, there's not enough shared information almost.
35:48They're making it up as they go along and they think,
35:50we want more beans, let's just put kilograms more of fertilizer on them.
35:55Absolutely, that's how it's going.
35:57Farmers are overusing fertilizer and water,
36:00and now half of their coffee plants are reaching the end of their life
36:04and there's no coordinated plan to replant them.
36:08Wow!
36:10Now that is a magnificent sight.
36:15That is really spectacular.
36:21And those aren't the only threats to the coffee industry here.
36:25We've just been hit by a cyclone,
36:28along with a large chunk of the middle of the country
36:31that Vietnam wasn't really expecting.
36:34How is climate change going to affect Vietnam
36:37and how is it going to affect the Vietnamese coffee industry, do you think, Dave?
36:41I recently spoke to a farmer and he was saying,
36:44actually, the climate doesn't meet my expectations anymore.
36:47So the climate is becoming really, really more erratic.
36:50So more extreme weather, hotter, hot weather,
36:55drier, dry weather, wetter, wet season.
36:59Absolutely.
37:00We're actually facing the risk that coffee farming
37:03will become less viable in economic terms,
37:07so farmers will get less income.
37:09And will it still be necessary or valuable to grow coffee?
37:13That's the big question we are facing over here.
37:25Much of this area was once covered by forest.
37:28The Vietnamese strategy of producing vast quantities
37:32of cheap, low-quality beans for instant coffee
37:34has contributed to its wholesale destruction.
37:42So much of the forest has already been cleared around here,
37:45but we're heading to one of the last areas
37:47that still get some form of protection.
37:53Yok Don is Vietnam's biggest national park
37:56and is one of the largest protected wildlife areas in Southeast Asia.
38:00Primary forest has virtually disappeared in Vietnam.
38:04According to data from Global Conservation Organization, WWF,
38:09Vietnam has lost nearly 40,000 square miles
38:11of total forest cover since 1973.
38:14The battle to preserve what's left
38:16is being fought by a small band of park rangers.
38:24I just realized the guy there has got an assault rifle.
38:28This is Mr. Tan here.
38:30Mr. Tan?
38:31Yeah.
38:32He's the deputy director of the park.
38:36As well as the clearing of forest for agriculture and coffee farming,
38:40there's also a major problem here with illegal logging.
38:43Simon did the forest through the Cambodia border.
38:48From here to the Cambodia border,
38:50about 30 kilometers.
38:52Really?
38:53Yes.
38:53All the park?
38:55From here.
38:55All the park.
38:56From here to there.
38:57Not easy for us because protect this area.
39:01You see a very big tree, very nice tree,
39:04and a lot of money if you sell them.
39:08So that's the reason why local people very often
39:12they would like to cut the tree to sell the market.
39:14And then they get the money easier
39:16compared with the agriculture activity, you know.
39:20And they're poor.
39:21Yeah, they're poor.
39:24Yeah, you can see this boat.
39:26We can check about it.
39:28I think they're going to check this boat.
39:31Where are you from?
39:32Where are you from?
39:33Where are you from?
39:34Where are you from?
39:36Okay.
39:59Let's look at this.
40:03This is such a rare sight now.
40:06Forest!
40:08Let's go.
40:10The Vietnamese government has a plan
40:12for rapid economic development.
40:15They're expanding agriculture
40:17and investing heavily in mining
40:18and hydroelectric power,
40:20which put the environment
40:21under incredible pressure.
40:28These guys really are doing an incredible job.
40:30The rest of the country is trying to devour its natural resources
40:35and they're holding the line
40:36and trying to protect what's left.
40:38This place is under siege.
40:47On the edge of the forest,
40:49we came across evidence
40:49of the ongoing threat from coffee farming.
40:56So he needs to do a bit of weeding,
40:58but is this your land
41:01or are you in the park here?
41:03No.
41:04I've grown up from the old age.
41:06I've grown up from the old age.
41:08And why grow coffee here?
41:10Why coffee rather than any other crop?
41:13It's more expensive.
41:15But it's 10 tons of coffee.
41:18There's a coffee.
41:19Goodness me.
41:21This is a complicated situation, you know.
41:24It's a little bit unclear
41:25whether this chap
41:27is inside the national park or not.
41:32But the national park is that away
41:33and that away and that away.
41:35He might be.
41:37The rangers have told us
41:38that elsewhere around here,
41:39farms are nibbling away
41:42at the edges of the park.
41:46It's very hard for them to stop.
41:48And a couple of times
41:49when we've talked about it,
41:50they've said,
41:50well, you know,
41:50these people are really poor.
41:53And obviously they feel
41:54a huge amount of sympathy for them.
41:57I mean, look at this guy saying,
41:59yeah, I make more money
42:00from coffee
42:01than I do from anything else.
42:02But look where he lives.
42:04He's not some wealthy coffee baron.
42:08He's just surviving.
42:12We often imagine
42:13that large companies
42:14and industry
42:15is primarily responsible
42:17for damaging
42:17or destroying the natural world.
42:20But national parks
42:21and wilderness areas
42:22around the globe
42:23are also under attack like this
42:24from hundreds of millions
42:25of poor villagers and farmers
42:27who clear a small area of land,
42:29grow a few crops
42:31and raise a few cattle.
42:34They want to raise
42:34their living standards
42:35or often are just trying
42:37to feed their families.
42:45The destruction of Vietnam's forests,
42:48often to grow our coffee,
42:50threatens the survival
42:51of countless animal species,
42:53including some of the most
42:54iconic creatures on earth.
43:11these elephants are domesticated,
43:13cared for by their trainers,
43:15known as mahouts.
43:17Their wild cousins
43:18have almost completely
43:19disappeared here.
43:20are the wild ones in the square.
43:24They're all pretty bright right.
43:25But why has the number of elephants
43:27fallen so dramatically then?
43:28It's like this,
43:29it's like this.
43:31They don't have a place
43:32to live,
43:32they have to be in the pine trees.
43:33If they have to live,
43:34the trees aren't tight,
43:35they run out.
43:36It's like,
43:38because they're away and gone,
43:40they don't meet much
43:41and eat,
43:42they don't eat.
43:43It's not enough
43:45to walk with each other.
43:46They don't have any health,
43:48It's hard.
43:49It's hard.
43:49It's hard.
44:03At the end of the Vietnam War, there were up to 2,000 wild elephants in Vietnam.
44:08There's now just a few dozen left.
44:10Loss of their habitat, including for coffee farms, is one of the biggest problems facing
44:15them.
44:15Which means it's incredibly important that it's protected.
44:24Elephants are just one victim of the environmental catastrophe caused by the clearance of Vietnam's
44:29forests.
44:32The Javan rhinoceros was declared extinct here recently, and there are no more than 30 tigers
44:38left in the entire country.
44:42The Vietnamese government is not doing much, and some conservation groups are actually
44:47giving up hope of protecting Vietnam's remaining endangered wildlife.
44:58Now here's a site.
45:02Mook and his family now survive on the money they earn from providing elephant rides to tourists.
45:08Do you normally bring your Ellie home with you?
45:11Bless her health.
45:15Fantastic.
45:16Can we watch?
45:17Can we see it?
45:18Can we watch?
45:43Can we see it?
45:45Yes.
45:47It's not only the environment and wildlife that suffered during Vietnam's great rush
45:52for coffee.
45:55Mook and his family are part of an ethnic group called the Ede people, one of around
45:5950 minority groups in Vietnam who make up almost 15% of the population.
46:08They're distinguished from the majority kin people by religion and heritage.
46:12Some are Christians, and some sided with the US during the Vietnam War.
46:18Ever since they've been treated with suspicion and hostility by the Vietnamese government.
46:24Many hill tribes were forced off their farmland when the majority kin people arrived in their millions to grow coffee.
46:35There have been violent protests against what many tribal people have seen as a land grab.
46:42This unverified footage is thought to show protests and a government crackdown.
46:50We know that hundreds of ethnic minority activists have been arrested and imprisoned for campaigning for rights for their people.
46:59Ethnic minorities here have really had a tough time of it.
47:05Any discussion of ethnic minority rights is extremely controversial here.
47:11If I was to start asking people questions about the ethnic minority situation, I would be putting them in danger.
47:18So to find out more, I need to leave the country.
47:30I flew to Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, several hundred miles away.
47:41Thousands of people from Vietnam's ethnic minorities have fled the country to live in exile abroad.
47:48We managed to arrange a meeting with two men who say they've escaped persecution in Vietnam.
47:55Their identities have been concealed to protect them.
47:59Can you describe to us what happened in ethnic minority areas in Vietnam as millions of farmers from other regions
48:07started moving in there?
48:11They took our lands away to build a huge state development.
48:15Without land, we had no way to earn a living.
48:25Last October, I saw it with my own eyes.
48:29Hundreds of police and soldiers came, and they uprooted all our coffee plants.
48:34They said the land now belonged to the authorities.
48:38Not even the whole village could stop them.
48:41They beat us.
48:43My nephew was beaten unconscious.
48:45It was impossible to stop them.
48:49The government confiscated the land.
48:55When they came and uprooted our coffee, we had to fight back.
48:58For that, they beat and tortured our people.
49:02It was unfair because that land was passed down to us by our ancestors.
49:08The regime has clamped down hard on signs of dissent.
49:16They arrested me for handing out leaflets.
49:21Leaflets asking young people to come and defend human rights and freedom in Vietnam.
49:29They said, how dare you?
49:31And six of them started beating me around the head.
49:36They beat me unconscious, and I can't remember anything else.
49:41There are still marks on my head.
49:46After that, they threw me into a morgue.
49:50When I came round, they carried on interrogating me.
49:57This man says he was held in prison for six months.
50:02When he was released, he fled the country.
50:06Are you frightened of the Vietnamese government?
50:10Do you think you'll ever be able to go home?
50:14We can't return.
50:16We're afraid because they have arrested us, interrogated and tortured us.
50:20How can we go back to Vietnam?
50:23What would happen to you if you returned home?
50:26I would be put in prison until I die.
50:28You're certain of that?
50:31Yes, I am.
50:34We're scared because the Vietnamese government is different from other governments.
50:42Once someone is charged with a crime, they are imprisoned, locked up.
50:47The government uses any means to make sure they stay in jail forever.
50:54And why would they imprison you?
50:56On what grounds and for what crimes?
51:00Opposing them is an offence.
51:03That's why they arrest us.
51:09The international group Human Rights Watch has described Vietnam's human rights record as atrocious and says conditions there are getting
51:17worse.
51:18There is widespread press censorship and across the country, people who question or challenge the regime face harassment, jail and
51:26torture.
51:26It seems clear to me that Vietnam does not get the attention that it deserves and would be warranted, frankly,
51:35for the scale of human rights issues and abuses that are happening there.
51:40I have a view, or at least I had a view before starting this journey of Vietnam as being a
51:46poor but fairly friendly and welcoming country which was an ideal place for a backpacker holiday.
51:53I am not suggesting it is not, but I think you have got to see the political aspect as well
51:58and the scale of the abuses that are happening there and that are largely hidden from international view and international
52:09attention.
52:26The end of the coffee trail took me to the south of Vietnam.
52:33Ho Chi Minh City, which used to be called Saigon, is Vietnam's biggest and most modern city.
52:49Nearby is the destination for many of Vietnam's coffee beans, a Nestle factory and warehouse.
52:56Wow, this place is huge.
53:01Nestle is the world's largest food company.
53:04It supplies the UK with more than half our instant coffee.
53:08Their manager here is Nacle Catan.
53:16This coffee is coming from what we call it up country.
53:22A large proportion of Vietnam's coffee bean harvest ends up in Nestle's warehouses.
53:30In fact, just a few giant multinational companies dominate the global instant coffee industry.
53:39Here it's Nestle that makes big profits by turning the beans into Nescafe.
53:43The process begins by filtering out the impurities.
53:55Wow.
53:59It's a massive piping that to me of course means absolutely nothing.
54:04But to the governor here, there's a purpose to everything of course.
54:09After that the beans are then roasted in a huge drum.
54:13Yes, this is the coffee that you've just seen before.
54:16It came to the roaster and now it is roasted and going to the extraction.
54:21Right, and what happens in the extraction bit is the secret bit.
54:25Yeah, in the extraction we extract first the solid but also this aroma you know of Nescafe when you open
54:33your jar.
54:34So that's the secret bit of your process that we can't see in there.
54:39The Nescafe formula is a closely guarded secret and it's hugely lucrative.
54:44The instant coffee industry is worth billions every year.
54:48But very little of that profit stays in the country, which isn't great for Vietnam.
55:03Although Vietnam is one of the world's biggest coffee producers, nobody seems to know about it.
55:08When you think about it, who ever asked for a cup of Vietnamese coffee?
55:14Starbucks, even Starbucks here in Vietnam doesn't actually promote and market coffee from Vietnam the way it does coffee from
55:23other coffee producing countries.
55:26Again, not great for Vietnam.
55:29Wilfrith is a Vietnamese American coffee consultant who's moved here to get involved in the national coffee industry.
55:35The big global coffee chains don't seem to promote and market Vietnamese coffee the way they do coffee from other
55:44coffee producing countries.
55:47What's going on?
55:48In terms of the coffee industry here, they're aiming for quantity which necessarily drives the quality down.
55:57Will wants to encourage Vietnamese farmers to switch from growing low quality instant coffee to planting the more valuable beans
56:04that go into expensive cappuccinos and espressos.
56:07He thinks the country has no choice.
56:09If they don't, I'm afraid that a lot of the signs are pointing towards complete failure.
56:14Is complete failure of the industry actually a possibility?
56:17Yes. We're entering sort of a perfect storm of conditions right now where the soil is being sucked dry by
56:24monoculture.
56:25So the soil is basically becoming exhausted, knackered almost. It's having the goodness sucked out of it.
56:31Absolutely. And to compound the problem, there's climate change to think about.
56:37And I've actually seen some models that essentially wipes out more than half of the growing regions here.
56:43That would just be horrific for farmers here.
56:46It would be devastating. It would be devastating for more than just farmers.
56:49But you've got processors and traders and people whose livelihoods depend directly on the coffee industry.
57:11The next day I headed to the country's biggest port.
57:15Thousands of tons of coffee leaves Vietnam from here and heads off across the sea to Europe and America.
57:22I've come to the end of the coffee trail.
57:25Clearly this country has come a long way economically in the last few decades.
57:29But they have got a lot further to go.
57:31They've got to diversify their economy.
57:34They've got to move on from producing massive quantities of one type of low quality, low value coffee.
57:41At the moment the situation is quite good for us because we get a cheap cup of coffee.
57:45But it's not so good for the environment here in Vietnam.
57:48And actually in the long term it's not that great for Vietnam's farmers either.
57:56Our humble cup of instant coffee is linked to some of Vietnam's greatest political problems and human rights abuses.
58:05But it's also helped to create modern Vietnam.
58:08Providing jobs for huge numbers of people.
58:11And helping to lift this country from the ashes of war.
58:22From Sellafield to Scarfell Pike, Simon Reeve delves deep into one of the UK's most glorious spots.
58:28Press Red to explore the lakes on iPlayer now.
58:31And the stars are coming out tonight on BBC2 Radio 2 in concert with Take That at 9.30.
58:38Under the До fotos when they come out.
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