Advancing digital transformation for green growth

By accurately interpreting market fluctuations and aligning with prevailing trends, the industry can successfully "reach new heights," upgrading the agricultural value chain from raw exports to deep processing. This strategy aims to establish green and sustainable brands that create international competitive advantages while increasing the capacity to attract climate finance, green credit, and both voluntary and mandatory carbon credit investments.

Promoting digital transformation, digitizing farming households, defining growing-area codes, and applying IoT, blockchain, and GIS represent both an unprecedented challenge and a significant opportunity. These steps are essential for Viet Nam to build a "transparent and digital" agricultural foundation that elevates its national standing in the global supply chain. In recent years, Vietnamese agriculture has undergone restructuring amidst rapidly evolving domestic and international economic conditions characterized by both opportunities and unpredictability.

Despite the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters, the sector has achieved comprehensive results through a spirit of innovation and decisive action.

The industry's internal structure continues to shift toward ecological, green, and circular models that employ advanced technologies to enhance quality and social value. Agriculture continues to serve as the economy's "backbone," ensuring national food security while strengthening climate resilience and fostering innovation-driven growth models.

However, a broader view reveals that the sector faces intensifying difficulties compared to previous periods. Agricultural development remains inconsistent, and development mindsets have occasionally struggled to keep pace with global trends. Policy responses and the synchronization of institutional frameworks require urgent, radical action to meet the demands of this new era of growth.

This transition occurs as globalization continues alongside new challenges such as protectionism, restrictive tariffs, and the restructuring of global supply chains. The Fourth Industrial Revolution and breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence are profoundly impacting production, while global trends toward emission reduction and anti-deforestation are creating strict environmental mandates.

International regulations, such as the EU Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR), impose non-tariff barriers that require rigorous due diligence and plot-level traceability. These measures directly affect Viet Nam’s key commodities, including coffee, rubber, timber, pepper, cocoa, and seafood.

Adapting to these requirements is difficult due to the lack of a unified digital map system, fragmented small-scale production involving over three million households, and a complex network of intermediaries that hinders transparent data recording. Furthermore, gaps in national governance and a lack of technological resources for GIS implementation pose significant risks to the industry.

To turn these obstacles into a springboard for growth, the agricultural sector must prioritize the completion of a synchronized institutional framework and a long-term development roadmap. This includes accelerating sustainable industrialization and modernization while fostering modern production organizations that link industry and services with rural development.

It is essential to develop legal systems that support the digital economy and AI, and to implement breakthrough policies for green and circular economic models. A critical immediate task is to enact laws on geographic traceability and to align the 2024 Land Law with forestry legislation.

Furthermore, the state must transition from preliminary inspections to post-inspections based on established production standards and quality norms. This shift requires enhancing the self-responsibility of economic actors and increasing the oversight of both society and state management agencies.

To establish a global green brand, Viet Nam must focus on developing a national database of land-forest-growing areas, ideally hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment. This platform should provide free traceability for smallholders, utilize GIS mapping and blockchain for the entire supply chain, and assign identification codes to every cultivated plot.

Finally, the government must standardize criteria for growing areas and the responsibilities of stakeholders within the value chain, moving away from a middleman-dependent model toward digital cooperatives and linked organizations.

Targeted support for vulnerable farmers, including GPS mapping assistance, standardization of land documentation, and access to unsecured loans, will be vital to ensuring a sustainable and inclusive transition. This holistic approach will allow Viet Nam to not only protect its natural resources but also to maintain its competitive edge in an increasingly demanding global market.