All language subtitles for The Coffee Trail with Simon Reeve BBC This World 720p EN_Subtitles01.UND

'In Britain we drink almost 500
million cups of coffee every week.'

But how much do we really know
about where our coffee comes from?

'I'm on a journey
from the fields...'

Flippin' 'eck!

'..to the factories...'

Coffee!

'..to uncover the surprising stories
behind our morning pick-me-up.'

Chairman Vu, you've got a Bentley!

'Coffee shops now sell
lattes and cappuccinos

'on almost every
British high street,

'but we've loved cheaper
instant coffee for decades.'

If you want the best coffee taste

you need the best blend of
the best beans.

'Producing instant coffee to fill
our cups is having a huge impact.'

There were up to 2,000
wild elephants in Vietnam.

There's now just a few dozen left.

'On my journey I discover how
our humble cup of coffee

'has helped transform
the fortunes of a nation.'

Thank you very much!

I worked hard for this!

I'm following The Coffee Trail.

MUSIC: "Toxygene"
by the Orb

I bet if you asked most Brits
where their coffee comes from,

they wouldn't say here.

I'm in Vietnam.

'When you think of coffee,
you usually think of Brazil,

'Jamaica or Colombia.'

Oh, goodness me.

'The first stop on my
coffee trail is Hanoi,

'the capital city in the
north of Vietnam.'

I've got to go left here, I think.
Aagh!

The streets here, the roads anyway,
they're clogged with...

mad motorcyclists,

psychopathic scooter drivers

and suicidal cyclists!

'There are more than
90 million people in Vietnam,

'and they all seem to be in my way.'

Aagh!

Aagh!

What are you doing, madam?
What are you doing?!

'Vietnam is the number one
supplier of coffee to the UK

'and one of the largest
coffee producers in the world.'

Oof! Time, I think,
for a quick coffee.

Coffee shop, another coffee shop.

There's another one ahead. There's
coffee shops everywhere here.

'The Vietnamese grow huge
quantities of coffee

'and now drink it by the gallon.

'But they like a very
particular brew.'

Ca phe trung. Ah, ca phe trung.

Ca phe trung? Ah, ca phe trung.

Thank you.

'The Vietnamese version of
a cappuccino

'wasn't quite what I was expecting.'

I think the joke is on me.

"Go and order a ca phe trung",
they said.

"What is a ca phe trung?"
is the question I did not ask.

Are there eggs in this coffee?

Egg coffee.

Ca phe trung is an egg coffee?

Egg coffee.

That's just not right!

'At least it wasn't
another speciality here,

'coffee beans extracted from
weasel droppings.'

Eggy coffee.

Mmm.

Ooh!

That's delicious. Thank you.

Really good.

I think we need to get on a journey

and find out where this
Vietnamese coffee's being made.

'30 years ago, less than 0.1% of

'global coffee production
came from Vietnam,

'but in just a few decades this
country has transformed itself

'into one of the world's
leading coffee producers.'

Hi. Can I get a ticket to
Dong Ha, please?

They drink coffee in the capital,
but they don't grow it here.

And to see that,
I need to head south.

Thank you.

Oh.

It's here. OK.

Oh, it's all right.

Oh, it's got a bit of
air conditioning, which,

well, to be honest,
I'm quite relieved about.

Oh, and a lovely...

..floral display.

I can feel the train
powering up underneath me,

so we're just about to leave.

It's exciting!

I tell you what,
they're dead on time.

11 o'clock.

'The story of coffee in Vietnam
goes back more than 100 years.

'Coffee was first introduced by
the French in the 19th century.

'Vietnam was part of a colony
known as French Indochina,

'which also included
Cambodia and Laos.'

'The French ruled Vietnam for almost
70 years from the late 1800s.

'They milked the country
for anything they could extract,

'earning vast fortunes.

'Colonial rule could be brutal.
Vietnamese workers toiled in

'the fields to produce
rubber, tea, rice and coffee.

'French rule finally came to an end
in the 1950s,

'after a Communist uprising in the
north drove them from the country.

'The conflict claimed
tens of thousands of lives.'

'In 1954, a peace conference

'resulted in the country
being partitioned,

'with a Communist government in
North Vietnam

'and an American-backed
regime in the South.

'But a new and even more
bloody war loomed.'

'I'd travelled 400 miles south
from the capital.

'It was time to head up
into the hills.

'Coffee is grown here
on a vast scale.'

Look there! Coffee!

We've arrived in coffee country.

This is one of the areas of Vietnam
where they grow our coffee,

coffee for us and
a few other countries.

BULL MOOS

The cow is spooked, it's off.

I think you'll find
the cow is a bull, Simon.

'I was visiting the village of
Huong Son.'

We've arrived.

'The coffee industry in Vietnam

'now provides a livelihood
for millions of people,

'mostly around small farms like this
of just a few acres.

'Across the country,
farmers like Ho Bon

'produce a staggering million
and a half tonnes of coffee.

'It's a key export for the country,

'and our number one source of
coffee in Britain.'

These are all the coffee on
the plant here, look at this.

This is ready to pick!

Let's go, OK!
Let's go pick some coffee!

Do you take everything off
or just the...?

OK, so just the red, all right, OK.

What's wrong with that?
Oh, he's shaking his head.

That specifically is what
you're after. None of this.

'Coffee is one of the most
valuable traded goods on Earth.

'Globally the industry's
worth more than £40 billion.

'It's the single most important
tropical commodity traded worldwide,

'accounting for nearly half of
total exports of tropical products.'

Why do you choose coffee
as the crop that you grow?

Why not something else?

So, coffee is more work,
it's harder work

but you can make more money from it.

So leave those on.
That's done! That one is done.

So we move in.

This is the coffee fruit, I suppose,

and inside is the
rather crucial coffee bean.

Tastes like, um, like a sour grape.

But from it you get this.

You can see the line through it,
which indicates the coffee.

And you get two,
obviously, in one...

in one fruit.

Bon, do you think
I might have a future

as one of your coffee pickers?

Because I've gone some uses,
you know,

I'm quite lanky so I can get to
the very top of the plant

and pick off the cherries,
the fruits from there.

That could be a problem,
I must admit.

'The villagers here wear uniforms

'left over from what we call
the Vietnam War.

'It was the conflict that
still defines Vietnam today.

'In 1965, American combat troops
were deployed

'to support the
South Vietnamese government,

'which was facing a guerrilla
campaign by Communist forces.'

'Their duty will be
strictly defensive,

'but they will shoot back
if attacked.

'Marines usually do.'

'Within a few years, America had
more than half a million troops

'on the ground, engaged in
a full-scale war.'

'An hour away from the village is
Khe Sanh,

'once a key American airbase,

'and the site of one of
the most important battles
of the Vietnam war.'

'Van Ngoc Vu is a guide

'who's been showing visitors
around the battlefield

'for more than ten years.'

The US dropped in total
about 100,000 tonnes of bombs

on the surrounding hills
of Khe Sanh,

on the North Vietnamese
army position,

suspected North Vietnamese
army position.

That's the most concentrated
bombing in the history of warfare.

The most concentrated period of
bombing ever? Yeah.

So, well, in this valley effectively
and on the hills around here?

Yeah.

'In 1968, Communist
North Vietnamese forces

'attacked the American airbase.

'US Marines were cut off,

'and the US Air Force responded
with overwhelming force.'

IMMENSE EXPLOSIONS

'Thousands of Vietnamese
soldiers and civilians died,

'along with hundreds of Americans.'

Look at the size of this.

Is this the biggest type of bomb

that the Americans dropped
on the positions around here?

No, not really.

The biggest one is, er,

ten times bigger,
heavier than this one.

15,000lbs.

Ten times heavier?!

Yeah, this one is 1,500lbs.

This was what was
pouring out the skies, then,

onto the North Vietnamese positions.

Yeah, it was raining.

Raining from the sky, yes.

Coffee planters still have
lots of problems

from the unexploded bombs
around Khe Sanh.

So there are still bombs like this
buried in the ground,

not quite tick-ticking, but just
waiting for a farmer or a tractor

with a plough to go over the top of
them and potentially set them off.

Yeah, exactly.

Is it safe to walk around here?

Are there any unexploded
bombs in the ground?

It is safe inside the
Khe Sanh combat base.

Now, actually, it's a tourist
attraction so it was cleared,

this is safe.

But if you wander around outside
the perimeter of Khe Sanh,

it's still dangerous, there's still

lots of unexploded land mines,
ordnance up there.

Really?
Yeah. In Quang Tri Province alone,

it's estimated between
80, 83% of land

is still being affected with
unexploded ordnance.

'The war ended nearly 40 years ago,

'but this area is still
desperately poor.

'Growing coffee is a major
source of income here.

'The need to put food on the table
drives people to take chances,

'and working the fields, despite the
risks posed by unexploded bombs.'

Hello!

Hello! Hello!

'Like most Vietnamese,

'18-year-old Ho Ver Nee was born
long after the war ended.'

TRANSLATION: Growing coffee is the
only thing we do around here.

We grow coffee.

I don't plant other crops
like rubber trees.

All of my friends, they grow coffee,
so I grow coffee as well.

'But for the past year he has been
unable to work on his farm.'

Can you tell us
what happened to you?

TRANSLATION: I was digging
in the ground to plant coffee.

I'd gone to work very early

and I was clearing away grass
and digging holes.

As I was digging a hole
there was an explosion.

I was knocked unconscious
and I can't remember anything else.

When I came around I realised
I was in the hospital.

I kept thinking of my parents.
I was scared I was going to die.

Did you have any idea
that there might be

explosives or bombs or mines
still in the ground in that field?

TRANSLATION: Yes, one person
had already been killed.

Why are there people
still working there?

TRANSLATION: We're very poor and we
don't have enough rice to eat.

I find it astonishing, but more than
100,000 Vietnamese have been killed

or injured by unexploded bombs
since the END of the conflict.

For rural populations like this,

wars rarely end
when peace treaties are signed.

Modern weaponry lives long
in the soil,

claiming thousands of lives
globally every year.

Since we left, Y has at last been
fitted for a prosthetic leg.

But thousands of other maimed
villagers and farmers across Vietnam

have yet to receive help.

Following America's defeat and
the end of the Vietnam War in 1975,

North and South Vietnam were unified
under a Communist government.

After years of devastating conflict,
the country was in economic ruin.

Coffee was to play a key role
in its eventual recovery.

I headed south towards
the main coffee growing region.

A few hours into our journey,
the weather began to turn.

We'd driven straight into
a huge tropical cyclone.

Just stopped by the side of the road
because now we really see

the power, the destructive force
of the cyclone.

The sea is flooding in,
inundating people's homes down here.

'Cyclone Nari was causing widespread
damage in central Vietnam.'

'16 people had been killed
or were missing.'

Look at this!

'50,000 homes had been
destroyed or flooded.

'It was the worst cyclone in years.'

Look at the tree here!

'Scientists report the weather here
is becoming more extreme
and unpredictable.

'It's a consequence
of global climate change.'

The cyclones that are
hitting Vietnam

are becoming stronger
and more powerful.

If you're a coffee farmer, say,

this is devastating.

As the storm subsided,
I continued south.

My journey had taken me through
some of Vietnam's remoter regions,

which tourists and TV crews
rarely enter,

and foreigners who do require extra
permits to turn off main roads.

When we'd strayed off our route,

we'd been stopped by the police
and had to beat a hasty retreat.

OK, so it looked like
the police were going to

stop us or even arrest us there,
but I think

we've just driven off away
from them, they're not following.

They might have decided we're just
more problems than we're worth.

Vietnam is still an authoritarian,
one-party, Communist state.

Political opposition is suppressed

and there's little
freedom of speech.

Our filming here is being controlled

and restricted to a degree
and we also have

a government-approved minder
who's travelling with us.

We're going to have to be careful
about what we film,

who we talk to and what we ask.

I'd arrived in
the central highlands.

The history of coffee production
is one of the most sensitive
issues here

because it involved blanketing
this region with coffee farms,

human rights abuses

and the mass movement
of millions of people.

I visited Nguyen Hu Phuong,
one of the newcomers.

He has a smallholding
of three hectares.

Xin chao.

Phuong? Phuong?

Hello, mate, I'm Simon,
very nice to meet you.

Is this all your coffee around us?

Let's go and have a look.

Thank you.

Goodness me!

So you're collecting up
the beans now? It's harvest time?

Do you want me to hold it? Yes! Yes!

Come on then.

Oh, goodness, no,
you haven't finished.

You're going to pull
all those berries off.

So, how long have you been here
and why did you come?

So you're not from this area then?

What was this land like
when you first arrived here?

Was it a coffee farm already?

What was the hardest part for you of
establishing a life and a farm here?

What does your wife think
was the toughest part?

I want to see the hands,
let me see the hands here.

All right, these have done
some hard work, haven't they?

But look at these!

You're doing the hard work,
really, aren't you?

After the end of the Vietnam War,

the Communist government started
huge collective farms here.

They weren't a great success.

Nobody on the collective farms had
much of an incentive to work hard

and corruption was rampant.
People were going hungry

and the country wasn't making
much money from its crops.

Eventually the government realised
they had to do something.

The crucial year is 1986.

That's when the Vietnamese
Communist Party had a major meeting.

They realised the economy
was in a terrible state

and they decided to relax the rules
and, among other things,

start growing and exporting
coffee on a massive scale.

The state-planned collective farms
were swept away.

Half a million smallholdings
emerged in their place,

and in the 1990s, coffee production
grew at a staggering 30% per year.

Like that?

Oh, I am, I'm so strong! So strong!

'Phuong and his family are part of
the massive migration...'

Flippin' 'eck!

'..of more than three million people
who've come here

'from other parts of the country
to farm coffee and other crops.'

The equipment here is still low tech
and often creaking.

But small farms like this have been
crucial to this country's rapid
economic growth.

This is what it's all about.

The next stage from here is
to sell this on to a wholesaler.

Coffee, coffee,
it's everywhere here.

You look at the communities
around here as well

and, where they're poor,
you've got...

Look here for example, electricity,

satellite dishes
on both houses here.

This is a very poor country still,

but it was a lot poorer
20, 30 years ago.

Things are changing,
things are improving.

In 1994, 60% of Vietnamese
lived below the poverty line,

now it's less than 10%.

Here we are, I think,

judging by the way they're
crossing this dual carriageway.

But Vietnam's coffee industry
has its problems.

Coffee grown on the small farms
is often poor quality,

farmers occasionally even bulk up
the weight of their coffee sacks

by chucking in stones and bolts.

And the deal has been done.

Is that my pay for the day?

Thank you very much!
THEY LAUGH

I worked hard for this!

So you've got about £650 here.

It's yours, after all.

And thank you for letting me
see this part of the process.

You might be drinking some of
farmer Phuong's coffee by now.

Like most Vietnamese farmers,
he grows

one specific type of bean to make
a specific type of coffee.

All of this coffee, in fact
almost all of the coffee

that's produced in Vietnam is
a type of coffee called Robusta.

Robusta coffee,
it's quite a hardy plant,

but it's quite
a low quality one as well

and it goes into making
instant coffee.

A lot of other countries
that produce coffee churn out

Arabica coffee, which is
a more valuable coffee,

it goes to make the more expensive
stuff, things like espressos,

which you can be charged a fortune
for in a high street coffee shop.

But here in Vietnam,
they make the cheap stuff.

Instant coffee
made largely from Robusta beans

accounts for nearly 80% of
the coffee we drink in Britain.

Our love affair with
the instant stuff really took off

in the 1970s and '80s.

Now that's what
I call a cup of coffee.

Of course. It's new Maxwell House.

Ah.

That's why Nescafe is made
from a blend of

three types of the finest
coffee beans in the world

and there are about
this many beans in every cup.

Red Mountain is freeze dried...

Communist Vietnam's coffee boom
was partly fed by

the middle-class aspirations
of 1980s Britain.

Mmm, lovely coffee. Anyway...

Red Mountain, it's like ground
coffee taste without the grind.

When instant coffee
landed on supermarket shelves,

consumption of coffee rocketed
around the world.

In Britain we now drink
twice as much of the stuff
as we did in the '70s.

One of the best places to see
the impact of our coffee boom

is the city of Buon Ma Thuot,
Vietnam's coffee capital.

Coffee's made some people
here very rich.

Chairman Vu, you've got a Bentley!

HE CHUCKLES

Of course you have a Bentley,
you're a rich chap.

You like your cars, Chairman Vu.

So, come on, what cars
have you got then? Tell us.

Ten Ferraris?!

So, you had many good years
when you look at the finances then?

You have five Bentleys?

Oh, flippin' 'eck!

Dang Le Nguyen Vu is known as
Vietnam's Coffee King.

He was one of the first to see
the potential of the business.

He's made a fortune from exporting
beans to countries like Britain,

as well as founding his own
international chain of coffee shops.

Accompanied by an escort of Jeeps,
Chairman Vu, as he's known,

showed me around some of his empire.

Goodness me,
it's quite the entourage, isn't it?

He's even built a multimillion-pound
coffee village,

a shrine to his beloved bean.

'At the centre of the complex
are some exhibits

'highlighting Vu's own
very personal philosophy.'

What?

Who have you got here, Chairman Vu,
and why have you got them here?

TRANSLATION: These statues
are of my top 100 people.

People who've shaped
the history of the world.

Are they people you personally
identify with

or you would like to be like?

TRANSLATION: Both.

I'd like to be one of the people
who changes the world,

but also I learn
from their core values.

For instance, Napoleon.

His talent in military strategy
is the best in the world,

no-one can rival him.

If you take coffee,
it's a stimulant for the brain.

The rich countries of the world
all drink a lot of coffee.

Take your own country -
the moment you shift

from drinking coffee to drinking tea,
the country slows down.

This is a shocking thing to say!

We drink both in Britain.

We love our tea and we drink
quite a lot of coffee as well.

Are you suggesting that
if we only drank coffee,

we would be a more creative country?

For me, coffee's a treasure.

Coffee is the heritage of mankind,
it's the solution for the future

and I don't think
that's an exaggeration.

Chairman Vu has big plans.

He wants to take Vietnam's coffee,

which we in Britain just use
for cheaper, instant coffee,

and sell it internationally
as a proper, expensive drink

in its own right.

It's an acquired taste,
but I liked it.

It's really good.

You want us to drink
more of this, don't you?

You want to try and sell this
around the world.

Yes. We want to bring Vietnamese
coffee culture to the world.

So is your plan to try and expand
into Europe, into North America,

are we going to see Chairman Vu's
coffee shops opening in the UK?

It isn't going to be easy,
but in the next year

we want to compete with
the big brands like Starbucks.

If we can take on
and win over the US market,

we can conquer the whole world.

Is that the plan?
Conquer the whole world?

That's my goal.

Two and a half million people
in Vietnam

are employed in
the coffee industry.

They grow it, they pack it,
they ship it.

Selling you coffee feeds
their families and helps
educate their children.

In many parts of the country,
growing coffee is the only industry,

but problems are looming.

Dave D'haeze is a Belgian soil
and water conservation scientist

living in Vietnam, who's an expert
on the coffee industry.

Dave, is the way that the Vietnamese

are farming coffee at the moment
sustainable?

I don't think so.

It's a very interesting question
because, actually,

different to any other project
we do in the world,

where we are trying to help farmers
to increase productivity,

here we have to tell farmers,

"Please, reduce water amounts,
reduce fertiliser amounts

"and still your production will be
one of the highest in the world."

So they're over-using fertiliser

and they're over-using
scarce water resources?

Absolutely, yes.

Why?

Well, there is this traditional
belief that you need to do that

and nobody has really been trained
on how to produce coffee.

Sometimes I'm saying,

"Look, every farmer in Vietnam is
the researcher of his own plot."

Oh, really, so there's not enough
shared information, almost?

They're making it up as they go
along and they think, "We want more

"beans, let's just put kilograms
more of fertiliser on them."

Absolutely, that's how it's going.

'Farmers are over-using
fertiliser and water

'and now half of their coffee plants
are reaching the end of their life

'and there's no coordinated plan
to replant them.'

Wow!

Now that is a magnificent sight!

That is really spectacular!

'And those aren't the only threats
to the coffee industry here.'

We've just been hit by a cyclone,

along with a large chunk
of the middle of the country,

that Vietnam
wasn't really expecting.

How is climate change going to
affect Vietnam and how is it

going to affect the Vietnamese
coffee industry, do you think, Dave?

I recently spoke to a farmer
and he was saying,

"Actually, the climate doesn't
meet my expectations any more."

So the climate is becoming
really, really more erratic.

So more extreme weather -

hotter hot weather,
drier dry weather,

wetter wet season?

Absolutely, yeah.

We're actually facing the risk
that coffee farming will become

less viable in economic terms,

so farmers will get less income,

and will it still be necessary
or valuable to grow coffee?

That's the big question
we are facing over here.

Much of this area
was once covered by forest.

The Vietnamese strategy
of producing vast quantities

of cheap, low quality beans
for instant coffee

has contributed to
its wholesale destruction.

So much of the forest has already
been cleared around here,

but we're heading to one of
the last areas that still gets
some form of protection.

Yok Don is Vietnam's
biggest national park

and is one of the largest protected
wildlife areas in southeast Asia.

Primary forest has virtually
disappeared in Vietnam.

According to data from global
conservation organisation WWF,

Vietnam has lost nearly 40,000
square miles of total forest cover

since 1973. The battle
to preserve what's left

is being fought by a small band
of park rangers.

Only just realised the guy there
has got an assault rifle.

This is Mr Tan here.

Mr Tan? Yeah?

He's the deputy director
of the park.

As well as the clearing of forests
for agriculture and coffee farming,

there's also a major problem here
with illegal logging.

Really? All park?

And they're poor.

Yeah, they're poor.

Yeah, you can see this boat.
We can check.

HE SPEAKS VIETNAMESE

I think they're going
to check this boat.

Uh-huh? OK.

Let's look at this!

This is such a rare sight now.

Forest!

Let's go.

'The Vietnamese government has a
plan for rapid economic development.

'They're expanding agriculture
and investing heavily in mining

'and hydroelectric power,

'which put the environment
under incredible pressure.'

These guys really are doing
an incredible job.

The rest of the country is trying
to devour its natural resources

and they're holding the line
and trying to protect what's left.

This place is under siege.

On the edge of the forest,
we came across evidence

of the ongoing threat
from coffee farming.

So he needs to do a bit of weeding.

Is this your land,
or are you in the park here?

And why grow coffee here?

Why coffee, rather
than any other crop?

Goodness me.

This is a complicated situation,
you know.

It's a little bit unclear whether

this chap is inside
the national park or not,

but the national park is that-a-way
and that-a-way and that-a-way.

He might be.

The rangers have told us
that elsewhere around here,

farms are nibbling away
at the edges of the park.

It's very hard for them to stop,

and a couple of times when we've
talked about it, they've said,

"Well, you know, these people
are really poor,"

and obviously they feel a huge
amount of sympathy for them.

I mean, look at this guy saying,
"Yeah, I make more money from coffee

"than I do from anything else."
But look where he lives.

He's not some wealthy coffee baron.

He's just surviving.

We often imagine that
large companies and industry is

primarily responsible for damaging
or destroying the natural world.

But national parks and wilderness
areas around the globe

are also under attack like this
from hundreds of millions

of poor villagers and farmers,
who clear a small area of land,

grow a few crops
and raise a few cattle.

They want to raise
their living standards,

or often are just trying
to feed their families.

The destruction
of Vietnam's forests,

often to grow our coffee,

threatens the survival of
countless animal species,

including some of the most iconic
creatures on earth.

Xin chao.

Bunh Cam.

And you?

Muk.

'These elephants are domesticated,

'cared for by their trainers,
known as mahouts.

'Their wild cousins have almost
completely disappeared here.'

Muk, why has the number of elephants
fallen so dramatically then?

At the end of the Vietnam War there
were up to 2,000 wild elephants

in Vietnam.
There's now just a few dozen left.

Loss of their habitat,
including for coffee farms,

is one of the biggest problems
facing them,

which means it's incredibly
important that it's protected.

Elephants are just one victim
of the environmental catastrophe

caused by the clearance
of Vietnam's forests.

The Javan rhinoceros
was declared extinct here recently

and there are no more than 30 tigers
left in the entire country.

The Vietnamese government's
not doing much

and some conservation groups are
actually giving up hope

of protecting Vietnam's
remaining endangered wildlife.

Now here's a sight.

'Muk and his family now survive
on the money they earn

'from providing elephant rides
to tourists.'

Do you normally bring your
ellie home with you?

Bless her health?

Oh, fantastic. Can we watch?
Can we see it?

It's not only the environment
and wildlife that suffered

during Vietnam's great rush
for coffee.

Muk and his family
are part of an ethnic grouping
called the Ede people,

one of around 50 minority groups
in Vietnam who make up almost
15% of the population.

They're distinguished from
the majority Kinh people by
religion and heritage.

Some are Christians and some sided
with the US during the Vietnam war.

Ever since, they've been treated
with suspicion and hostility

by the Vietnamese government.

Many hill tribes
were forced off their farmland when

the majority Kinh people arrived
in their millions to grow coffee.

There have been violent protests
against what many tribal people
have seen as a land grab.

This unverified footage
is thought to show protests

and a government crackdown.

We know that hundreds of
ethnic minority activists
have been arrested

and imprisoned for campaigning
for rights for their people.

Ethnic minorities here have
really had a tough time of it.

Any discussion of
ethnic minority rights

is extremely controversial here.

If I was to start asking people
questions about

the ethnic minority situation,
I would be putting them in danger.

So, to find out more,
I need to leave the country.

I flew to Bangkok,

the capital of Thailand,
several hundred miles away.

Thousands of people
from Vietnam's ethnic minorities

have fled the country
to live in exile abroad.

We managed to arrange a meeting
with two men who say they've
escaped persecution in Vietnam.

Their identities have been
concealed to protect them.

Can you describe to us what happened
in ethnic minority areas in Vietnam

as millions of farmers from other
regions started moving in there?

TRANSLATION:
They took our lands away

to build a huge state development.

Without land, we had no way
to earn a living.

TRANSLATION: Last October I saw it
with my own eyes, hundreds of police

and soldiers came and they
uprooted all our coffee plants.

They said the land now
belonged to the authorities.

Not even the whole village
could stop them.

They beat us.

My nephew was beaten unconscious,
it was impossible to stop them.

The government confiscated the land.

When they came and uprooted
our coffee, we had to fight back.

For that they beat
and tortured our people.

It was unfair because that land was
passed down to us by our ancestors.

The regime has clamped down hard
on signs of dissent.

TRANSLATION: They arrested me
for handing out leaflets.

Leaflets asking young people
to come and defend human rights

and freedom in Vietnam.

They said, "How dare you?"

and six of them started
beating me around the head.

They beat me unconscious
and I can't remember anything else.

There are still marks on my head.

After that, they threw me
into a morgue.

When I came round,
they carried on interrogating me.

This man says he was held
in prison for six months.

When he was released,
he fled the country.

Are you frightened of
the Vietnamese government?

Do you think you'll ever be
able to go home?

We can't return.

We're afraid because
they have arrested us,

interrogated and tortured us.

How can we go back to Vietnam?

What would happen to you
if you returned home?

I would be put in prison
until I die.

You're certain of that?

Yes, I am.

We're scared because
the Vietnamese government is
different from other governments.

Once someone is charged with a crime
they are imprisoned, locked up.

The government uses any means to make
sure they stay in jail for ever.

And why would they imprison you?

On what grounds and for what crimes?

Opposing them is an offence,
that's why they arrest us.

The international group
Human Rights Watch

has described Vietnam's human
rights record as atrocious

and says conditions there
are getting worse.

There is widespread press censorship

and across the country people
who question or challenge the regime

face harassment, jail and torture.

It seems clear to me
that Vietnam does not get

the attention that it deserves
and would be warranted, frankly,

for the scale of human rights issues
and abuses that are happening there.

I have a view, or at least I had
a view before starting this journey,

of Vietnam as being
a poor but fairly friendly and

welcoming country which was an ideal
place for a backpacker holiday.

I'm not suggesting it's not,

but I think you've got to see
the political aspect as well

and the scale of the abuses that
are happening there and that are

largely hidden from international
view and international attention.

The end of the coffee trail
took me to the south of Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh City,
which used to be called Saigon,

is Vietnam's biggest
and most modern city.

Nearby is the destination
for many of Vietnam's coffee beans,

a Nestle factory and warehouse.

Wow, this place is huge.

Nestle's the world's largest
food company.

It supplies the UK with more
than half our instant coffee.

Their manager here is Nakle Kattan.

This coffee is coming from
what we call upcountry.

A large proportion of Vietnam's
coffee bean harvest

ends up in Nestle's warehouses.

In fact, just a few
giant multinational companies

dominate the global
instant coffee industry.

Here it's Nestle that makes
big profits by turning the beans
into Nescafe.

The process begins by filtering
out the impurities.

Wow.

It's a mass of piping that to me, of
course, means absolutely nothing,

but to the guv'nor here, there's
a purpose to everything, of course.

'After that, the beans are then
roasted in a huge drum.'

Yeah, this is the coffee that
you've just seen before,

it came through the roaster

and now it is roasted
and going to the extraction.

Right, and the extraction bit
is the secret bit?

Yeah. In the extractions,
we extract first the solid,

but also this aroma, you know,
of Nescafe, when you open your jar.

But that's the secret bit of your
process that we can't see, isn't it?

'The Nescafe formula is
a closely guarded secret

'and it's hugely lucrative.

'The instant coffee industry
is worth billions every year,

'but very little of that profit
stays in the country,

'which isn't great for Vietnam.'

Although Vietnam is one of the
world's biggest coffee producers,

nobody seems to know about it.

When you think about it, whoever
asks for a cup of Vietnamese coffee?

Starbucks,
even Starbucks here in Vietnam,

doesn't actually promote and market
coffee from Vietnam

the way it does coffee from other
coffee-producing countries.

Again, not great for Vietnam.

Will Frith is a Vietnamese-American
coffee consultant

who's moved here to get involved
in the national coffee industry.

The big global coffee chains
don't seem to promote

and market Vietnamese coffee
the way they do

coffee from other
coffee-producing countries.

Right. What's going on?

In terms of
the coffee industry here,

they're aiming for quantity, which
necessarily drives the quality down.

Will wants to encourage Vietnamese
farmers to switch from growing

low quality instant coffee to
planting the more valuable beans

that go into expensive cappuccinos
and espressos.

He thinks the country has no choice.

If they don't, I'm afraid that

a lot of the signs are pointing
towards complete failure.

Is complete failure of the industry
actually a possibility?

Yes.

We're entering sort of a perfect
storm of conditions right now

where the soil is being
sucked dry by monoculture.

So, the soil is basically becoming
exhausted, knackered almost,

it's having the goodness
sucked out of it.

Absolutely,
and to compound the problem

there's climate change
to think about.

And I've actually seen some models
that essentially wipes out

more than half
of the growing regions here.

And that would just be horrific
for farmers here.

It would be devastating.
It would be devastating for

more than just farmers,
you've got processors and traders

and people whose livelihoods depend
directly on the coffee industry.

The next day, I headed to
the country's biggest port.

Thousands of tonnes of coffee
leave Vietnam from here

and heads off across the sea
to Europe and America.

I've come to the end of
the coffee trail.

Clearly, this country has come
a long way economically

in the last few decades, but they
have got a lot further to go.

They've got to diversify
their economy,

they've got to move on from
producing massive quantities

of one type of low quality,
low value coffee.

At the moment, the situation's
quite good for us because

we get a cheap cup of coffee, but

it's not so good for the environment
here in Vietnam, and actually

in the long term it's not that great
for Vietnam's farmers either.

Our humble cup of instant coffee
is linked to some of Vietnam's

greatest political problems
and human rights abuses.

But it's also helped
to create modern Vietnam,

providing jobs for
huge numbers of people

and helping to lift this country
from the ashes of war.