Advances required across the board within agriculture

Advances required across the board within agriculture

The agricultural industry needs to focus on improving productivity and quality, reducing production costs to avoid affecting exports to the United States, while also diversifying markets and aiming to achieve export turnover of $65 billion in 2025.

Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MoAE) held a meeting to discuss solutions to achieve industry growth of 4 per cent for 2025. By the end of the first quarter, the industry was estimated to have experienced growth of 3.7 per cent. Usually, second quarter growth is higher than the first quarter, and growth momentum continues in the last two quarters of the year. Therefore, the increase of 3.7 per cent in the first three months indicates that we are close to the annual target.

Phung Duc Tien, deputy Minister of Agriculture and Environment

The MoAE is striving for export turnover of $65 billion for agricultural, forestry, and fishery products this year. Between January and March, the agricultural sector reached $15.72 billion, up 13.1 per cent on-year. However, facing the US reciprocal tariff scheme, we need to discuss prioritised and specific solutions for each sector and detailed implementation methods to manage exports to meet the government’s target of $64-65 billion.

The government and the MoAE have taken numerous actions since the United States announced new tariffs. With this new level, Vietnamese agricultural products are relatively less affected. However, during the imposition process, we still need to voice our opinions to US regulatory agencies, as this country is a comprehensive strategic partner of Vietnam. The entire economy and all farmers must benefit from this partnership.

The government is also holding annual meetings to discuss this matter. Now, with such a comprehensive strategic partnership, we can still find solutions, especially through sci-tech advancements, improving productivity and quality, moderately reducing costs, and meeting the criteria, standards, and regulations of this strict market.

Vietnam’s stance is to seek comprehensive, long-term solutions, with a particular emphasis on negotiation. In negotiations with the US, we need to leverage the inherent strengths of Vietnamese agricultural products, including good quality, competitive pricing, no direct competition with US domestic production, and many items without substitutes.

At the same time, we must have the mindset that it is an opportunity to restructure production, commodity sectors, and export markets. This is an opportune moment to boost the development of high-value-added products, moving towards a sustainable, higher-quality production model. The US remains one of the largest, most potential-rich markets with high profit margins for Vietnamese agricultural products.

The MoAE continues to implement solutions as directed by the government. Among these, negotiations with US partners, such as the Department of Agriculture and the Embassy in Vietnam, will be strongly promoted to find common ground with the US government.

In particular, the ministry will instruct localities, businesses, and farmers to maintain production plans without changes during this period. At the same time, it will support businesses in seeking alternative markets and continue gathering feedback from enterprises and associations to propose to the government. However, the importance is that we still must focus on directing production to enhance productivity and quality while lowering costs, ensuring our products can compete with other markets. On the other hand, this is also an opportunity to accelerate market expansion and reduce dependence on a single market.

As we know, in the agricultural product market structure with over 200 countries and territories, in 2024, exports to the US reached $13.8 billion, ranking first; China followed with $13.6 billion, ranking second. This structure gives us an advantage when entering the US market.

In terms of market share, exports to Europe account for over 44 per cent, Japan 6.7 per cent, South Korea nearly 4 per cent, and the Philippines imported 2.92 million tonnes of our rice - over 5 per cent. When our agricultural products enter the US market, there are many barriers, such as anti-dumping policies and equivalence requirements, but we have overcome them all.

For example, the Chinese market ranks second. There are still many products we can export to China, especially those covered by signed protocols, such as frozen durians, vaccinated animals with reduced blood clotting, crocodiles, monkeys, and many other items in both crop and fishery sectors.

Finally, we must focus on production, applying science and technology to enhance value, productivity, and quality, reduce costs, and meet the standards and regulations of the US market while expanding to other highly potential markets for Vietnamese agricultural products.

VIR