The Vietnamese cinnamon community in Northwest Vietnam is built on generations of traditional farming knowledge. In villages like ours in Lao Cai province, cinnamon is more than a crop β it is the foundation of our entire community’s livelihood and culture.
When most people think of cinnamon, they picture a jar on a kitchen shelf. When I think of cinnamon, I see my entire village β because cinnamon is the reason our community exists in the form it does today.
How Cinnamon Built a Community
Phu Son sits among the mountains of Lao Cai Province in Northwest Vietnam. The hills surrounding us are thick with cinnamon trees β thousands of them, planted over decades by generations of families.
For most households here, cinnamon is the primary income. Families that once lived in bamboo shelters with dirt floors now have concrete houses. Children who might have left school early now continue through high school and sometimes university. Clean water, motorbikes, better nutrition β these improvements came from cinnamon harvests.
It is accurate to say that cinnamon built this village.
The Difficulties
But dependence on a single crop creates vulnerability.
When traders control the buying price β and in a remote village with limited internet and no banking infrastructure, they largely do β a bad year can undo years of progress. Farmers accept what they are offered because the alternatives are not visible to them.
Large companies operating in the region provide jobs, which is valuable. But they also concentrate decision-making power. Farmers become labor in a chain they do not control. The raw material leaves the village; the finished value stays somewhere else.
The Quiet Departure
This is why young people leave. They watch their parents work grueling hours on steep hillsides for uncertain returns, and they choose factory work or construction jobs in distant cities instead. The village ages. Knowledge that took generations to develop starts to fade.
I was one of those who left.
Coming Back With a Different Idea
What I learned in the city was that the tools to reach global consumers already exist β websites, shipping networks, digital payments. The missing piece was someone willing to connect a remote village to that infrastructure.
Vietnam Cassia is my attempt at that connection. It is small. It is one person. But if it works, it demonstrates something important: that a farming village does not need to surrender control of its products to participate in global commerce.
My hope is that this becomes more than a single website. I want to see a cooperative where families process, package, and sell their own cinnamon under their own terms. I want young people in villages like mine to see a viable path that does not require leaving home.
Every order placed here is a small piece of that proof.
The Economics of Cinnamon Farming in Vietnam
A single cinnamon tree takes 8-15 years to mature before its bark can be harvested. This long investment cycle means cinnamon farming requires patience and generational planning. Families plant trees knowing their children or grandchildren will benefit from the harvest. In our village, the average family manages 2-5 hectares of cinnamon forest, with annual harvests providing a stable income that has lifted many families out of poverty.
Supporting Vietnamese Cinnamon Communities
When you buy Vietnamese cinnamon directly from farming communities, you support sustainable livelihoods and help preserve traditional knowledge. Every purchase from Vietnam Cassia goes directly to the families who grow, harvest, and process the cinnamon. We believe in fair trade, transparent pricing, and building long-term relationships between consumers and the communities that produce their food.