08/16/2026
FORMAL STATEMENT ON BIOPIRACY: THE COFFEE PLANTATIONS OF THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS
This is a statement concerning the coffee plantations in the Central Highlands, the second-largest coffee-producing region in the world. The Government of Vietnam has committed biopiracy and expropriation against the Dega people, who are the rightful owners and stewards of this land.
The history is as follows:
In 1857, a French missionary brought coffee seeds to Vietnam and planted them around his residence in Bình Định Province in northern Vietnam. The coffee could not grow well there because the soil was unsuitable.
In the early period around 1875, coffee cultivation spread southward into the Central Highlands, specifically reaching Buôn Ma Thuột in Đắk Lắk Province, where the climate and volcanic soil proved ideal.
Between 1888 and the 1920s, French colonists and the Rhade people developed professional agriculture and systematically established large-scale coffee plantations across the Central Highlands region. During that time, the Dega people became employees on the coffee plantations, and the French taught them how to care for and cultivate the plants. At that time, the Vietnamese government and the Vietnamese people did not know what coffee was used for, nor did they know how to consume it.
After the end of the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese communist government confiscated everything from the Dega people.
Today, that stolen industry has become a massive global coffee production and trading business for Vietnam, producing 1.59 million tonnes per year valued at 8.92 billion annually. Meanwhile, our Dega people have become impoverished — among the poorest people in the world.
