Tea production between contract and none contract farmers in Phu Tho Province of Vietnam

Tea is one of key crops which substantially contributes to Vietnam’s annual exports, creates jobs and raises income for farmers. However, tea production farmers are still facing many difficulties such as low farm management, disease control, etc. Of which, tea consumption is considered to be the most challenge and the main reasons is the low cooperation between farmers and other stakeholders in the tea value chain. This study aims to look more deeply and find out the linkage and benefit of farmers in the model of cooperation between farmers and tea processing company through contract and none contract tea production in the study site. The results shown that the contract farming in tea production in the study sites was still not tightened and did not reflect clearly its real roles. However, it was gradually reflected it s roles as the fully contract farmers (worker farmers) received the highest productivity, turnover and value added and the most satisfied, the contract farmers (partly contract) achieved not as high benefit but quite satisfied with their results and contract. None contract farmers although received reasonable results recently but they still did not assure the production, they would like to engage in some kinds of cooperation in the future.