Sri Lanka, July 15 -- Vietnam's emergence as one of the world's leading coffee producers should give Sri Lanka pause.

Less than half a century ago, Vietnam was scarcely associated with coffee. Today it is among the world's largest exporters. That transformation was not the result of geography alone, but of a sustained national effort to align land use, research, finance, infrastructure, processing and markets around a coherent long-term strategy.

Sri Lanka's experience has been very different

Ironically, Sri Lanka was once itself a major coffee producer. When coffee leaf rust destroyed that industry in the nineteenth century, the British quickly reorganised production around tea, creating one of the world's great plantation economie...