Strategies to promote development - the coffee industry in Vietnam

BBC2 are showing a documentary about the massive growth of the coffee industry in Vietnam at 8.00pm tonight - if you miss it, it will be repeated on Monday 3 Feb at 23.30, and also available on i-player. It looks as if it will provide some excellent examples of agricultural strategies to promote development, as well as constraints on that development. I have asked my students to read this article from the BBC News Magazine which summarises some of the programme, and to look at this summary of the World Bank's development report produced last summer.

There is also some background data here which shows the massive growth in Vietnam's share of the world coffee market:

temp_file_Coffee_exports_2000_to_20091.pdf

temp_file_Coffee_exports_1990_to_991.pdf

Finally, you might want to look at Oxfam's educational resource, the Coffee Chain Game - which includes a great quiz, even if you don't want to go so far as to set up the trading game.