Can coffee be sourced in a way that avoids buying coffee with traces of glyphosate? In Vietnam, glyphosate is gradually being phased out now that the Vietnamese government has prohibited new imports and production of the herbicide in spring 2019. However, stocks of glyphosate already present in the country can still be sold and used.
Requested by a European coffee roaster, Agri-Logic investigated the possibility of sourcing coffee in Vietnam with low(-er) glyphosate contamination. To answer this question a two-pronged approach was used consisting of on-farm field trials as well as supply chain mapping. The former intended to establish the correlation between glyphosate use and residue-levels under controlled glyphosate application conditions while the latter was used to establish the contamination levels in coffee of small village-based coffee collectors and to identify geographical areas that are safer for sourcing.