On November 6th, two teams of Fresh Studio headed 100 km to Mo Cay Nam district in Ben Tre province to study the value chain of organic coconuts. The 12-person research team included six members from the Fresh Studio Business Development and Marketing departments, a gender specialist from the Asian Development Bank, and five enumerators.

In four days of field work, over sixty coconut farmers participated in focus group discussions and quantitative interviews. Ben Tre is the most important coconut producing province in Vietnam. Unsurprisingly, coconut is a strategic crop in Ben Tre, contributing around 70% to household income. In the past few years, Ben Tre farmers benefited from high prices but at the same time suffered severe damage from increasing salinization, with a particularly severe event during the dry season of 2016.

In addition to farmers, interviews were held with local authorities, input suppliers, traders, and processors. These interviews provided information about the domestic supply chain, the tremendous variety of products you can make with coconuts, and coconut-related strategies and policies.