Green agriculture is becoming an increasingly widespread trend in agricultural cultivation thanks to its practical benefits: saving inputs and efficient outputs. Vietnam’s commitments in COP26 to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 are one of the driving forces strongly promoting the green transformation trend of the agricultural sector. Professor, Dr. Nguyen Hong Son – Director of the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences, talks with Nhan Dan monthly on this topic.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025 – 17:06
Tuesday, January 14, 2025 – 17:06
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| The project of 1 million hectares of high-quality, low-emission rice in the Mekong Delta has initially shown very positive results. Photo | Kim Nha |
In which direction is Vietnam’s agricultural transformation heading, sir?
Vietnam has been restructuring the agricultural sector towards increasing added value, sustainable development, promoting the development of organic agriculture, circular agriculture, and green agriculture.
In general, the green development that the agricultural sector is aiming for is to maintain sustainable growth; improve the efficiency of using and protecting land and water resources; increase the use of fertilizers, pesticides and biological products, reduce agricultural chemical inputs; increase the efficiency of using natural resources; apply advanced technologies; increase organic production and expand the scale of applying good agricultural production practices… to aim at improving production efficiency, linking production with environmental protection and adapting to climate change.
The goal of this agriculture is to create high and sustainable productivity, while reducing negative impacts on the environment, protecting biodiversity, and improving the quality of life of farmers.
How do you evaluate the Government’s recent policies and actions to promote the strong transformation of agriculture towards green and sustainable development?
Since 2013, the Prime Minister has approved the project to restructure agriculture towards increasing added value and sustainable development, emphasizing the three pillars of economy, society and environment in agricultural development.
Especially at the COP26 Conference in 2021, Vietnam has made strong commitments, which are the premise for implementing green agriculture. First of all, the commitment to bring net emissions to zero by 2050; commitment to reduce global methane emissions by 2030 compared to 2010; The second is to participate in the Glasgow Declaration of Leaders on Forests and Land Use. Immediately after COP26, the Government continued to improve the relevant legal framework, develop specific plans, measures and roadmaps to promote circular economic development and adapt to climate change. In particular, policies to develop sustainable agriculture and rural areas by 2030 with the goal of developing green, environmentally friendly agriculture…
The Government’s strategic decisions are extremely important because they not only provide direction for the industry but also promptly improve the legal corridor, opening up opportunities for investment, development and international integration in the green trend. Along with environmental protection laws, specialized laws and sub-law documents have provided specific policies and regulations to encourage sustainable production activities. For example, when it was first promulgated, Law on Cultivation No. 31 devoted a whole chapter to regulating the use of resources in cultivation, which provided regulations on the use and protection of cultivated land, the use of irrigation water, the use of beneficial organisms, cultivation adapted to climate change and environmental protection. After the Law was promulgated, the management agencies of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) issued a series of projects to improve the efficiency of exploitation and use of resources in agriculture, improve production efficiency associated with environmental protection such as the project on soil health protection; the project on the use of biological pesticides; the project on improving the efficiency of fertilizer use… All of these projects are aimed at the goal of green growth that I mentioned above.
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| Professor, Dr. Nguyen Hong Son |
It can be said that thanks to these timely and correct decisions, the greening of agriculture has achieved many important achievements. What do you think are these?
Vietnam has advantages to develop green agriculture such as having many agro-ecological zones with diverse climate and soil conditions. Many localities, enterprises and cooperatives have raised awareness among farmers in reducing the amount of seeds sown, implementing integrated pest management (IPM), using pesticides according to the “4 rights”, reducing the amount of inorganic fertilizers, along with many technical advances, such as: “3 reductions, 3 increases”, “1 must, 5 reductions”, “agro-exposed irrigation-drying techniques”… These synchronous technical solutions and processes have brought many benefits in practice, helping to increase productivity and product quality, reduce production costs and reduce environmental pollution.
Or the rice-shrimp and rice-fish models are typical models of adaptation to climate change in the Mekong Delta region, not only increasing the value of production, but also helping to solve the problem of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building a green and sustainable agriculture. These are new directions suitable for the current market because in the world market, many developed countries have encouraged and prioritized the import of ecological products and organic products.
In livestock farming, waste treatment and utilization of agricultural by-products in the form of circular economy are being applied on different scales. Along with biogas projects, the livestock industry is promoting the guidance of farmers to collect livestock waste to raise earthworms, black soldier flies, etc. to create a source of protein for livestock feed in the context of high animal feed prices, while converting waste into organic fertilizer, reducing harm to the environment.
Organic agricultural production in Vietnam has also been developing strongly. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, if in 2016, the organic farming area reached about 77 thousand hectares, by 2022, the whole country had about 240 thousand hectares. Notably, 59/63 provinces and cities nationwide have implemented organic agriculture and this trend is spreading more and more strongly. Thanks to the implementation of many green and clean agricultural production models, clean agricultural and aquatic products with traceable origins account for an increasingly large proportion. A survey published in 2020 by the International Organization for Agriculture showed that Vietnamese organic agricultural products are consumed domestically and exported to 180 countries around the world, including: the US, the European Union (EU), China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Singapore, etc.
How does green development contribute to helping the agricultural sector adapt to climate change, when climate change is causing extremely severe impacts?
Focusing on encouraging and promoting the use of biological fertilizers and pesticides; using water-saving irrigation techniques… or applying other smart farming methods not only helps us manage and use water resources effectively, use materials and fuels effectively, but also contributes significantly to adapting to climate change, especially drought and salinity; minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, thereby minimizing the impact of climate change.
Implementing the National Strategy on Green Growth for the period 2021-2030, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has developed a Green Growth Action Plan with the goal of developing agriculture in an ecological, circular, low-carbon direction to improve growth quality, added value, competitiveness and sustainable development. The agricultural sector aims to have the proportion of organic fertilizer products in total fertilizer products reach over 30%; Increase the number of biological pesticides in the list of permitted pesticides to more than 30%; at least 30% of the total irrigated upland crop area applies advanced, water-saving irrigation methods.
Along with converting 300 thousand hectares of rice fields to grow other crops that are more economically and environmentally efficient, the agricultural sector strives for the area of organic cropland to reach about 2% of the total cropland area. The rate of organic livestock products reaches about 2-3% of the total livestock products produced domestically. At the same time, expand the scale of application of good agricultural production practices to improve quality, added value, competitiveness and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector. Building new rural areas ensures meeting the goals of green and sustainable growth; forming a lifestyle in harmony with the environment and nature, protecting and developing green, clean, beautiful and civilized landscapes and environments.
The benefits of green agriculture are clear, however, farmers still have many concerns and worries when making the transition to this trend. Can you analyze why?
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An organic tomato garden in Mang Den, Kon Tum. Photo: T.H
It can be seen that green agriculture in Vietnam has made great strides. However, in reality, there are still some barriers that need to be removed, because we still do not have a clear spatial planning for strategic agricultural products, production is spread out in many localities, many economic regions including those without advantages; lack of planning to build infrastructure and protect organic production areas; there are no strong enough mechanisms and policies to support organic production in particular and green production development programs in general, which are mostly integrated into other programs and projects such as: high-tech agricultural development programs, support for linking production and consumption of agricultural products through contracts, etc.
Our country’s agricultural production is still small and fragmented, lacking close and deep linkages along the value chain. The productive forces have developed very highly but the production relations are still slow to change, causing difficulties in developing a large-scale concentrated commodity production associated with quality certification and signing economic contracts and building brands for product consumption. Market development is also hindered by the small scale of goods, inconsistent quality and lack of quality certification, lack of product brands. Also from this limitation, the value of products has not improved significantly while production costs are higher, thus not encouraging people and businesses to invest in green production and organic production.
People’s access to high technology is still limited due to lack of knowledge and investment. Applying high technology in agricultural production requires large initial costs, while the investment capacity of economic sectors in agriculture in Vietnam is still limited. It can be said that financial resources for green agricultural development are also very lacking. To implement the strategy of developing green agriculture in a sustainable direction, in the coming time, Vietnam needs to make great efforts, not only from the Government, but also from the private sector including enterprises and direct producers participating in implementation at different scales to unlock investment resources of the whole society to invest in developing agricultural infrastructure.
Science and technology are key factors in green transformation, while as you said above – applying high technology in agriculture requires huge costs, so how should we solve this problem?
Applying science and technology to solve challenges in agricultural development with the superiority of technologies such as: Biotechnology, greenhouse technology, drip irrigation technology, sensor technology, automation, Internet of Things… helps agricultural production save costs, increase productivity, reduce prices and improve the quality of agricultural products, and protect the environment. On the other hand, high-tech agriculture helps farmers be proactive in production, overcome seasonality, reduce dependence on weather and climate, and meet market demand for agricultural product quality.
To apply technology effectively, first of all, there must be good technological foundations, people must have full understanding and knowledge of technology, of the market, and must search for and choose suitable technology, effective technology with low investment costs… This can only be achieved when we have stronger investment policies (including accepting risks) for science and technology to create breakthroughs, in which special attention is paid to basic technologies such as biotechnology, high technology to serve a smart agriculture, precision agriculture, agricultural processing technology needs to be given priority for proper investment.
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In 2023, Vietnam successfully sold more than 10 million forest carbon credits. Photo: Tran Hai
The agricultural sector is currently talking a lot about low-emission production and carbon credits. In addition to the benefits of sustainable development, does it really bring the economic efficiency we expect?
Over the past few years, Vietnam has successfully carried out carbon credit sales, earning “cash on delivery” with a value of up to about 60 million USD. Of which, the Vietnam Livestock Biogas Program has been implemented in 53 provinces, to date 181,683 biogas plants have been built, benefiting 1 million people in rural areas. Through this Program, Vietnam has sold more than 3 million carbon credit units, earning 8.1 million USD. In 2023, Vietnam successfully transferred more than 10 million carbon credits and earned more than 50 million USD. This is the premise for many organizations, individuals and localities to pay attention to the carbon credit market which has great potential.
According to the assessment, Vietnam’s agricultural sector, from livestock farming, crop cultivation, and forestry, has the potential to shift to cultivation and production to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with solutions for circular agricultural production, ecological agriculture, organic agriculture, etc. The potential of the agricultural sector can provide about 57 million carbon credits per year (equivalent to 57 million tons of CO2 emissions reduction), which can be sold to international organizations, bringing in nearly 300 million USD/year.
However, Vietnam currently mainly participates in the voluntary carbon market, so the selling price is low, only 5 USD/credit, because Vietnam has not signed any bilateral agreements, so it is not possible to sell carbon credits in the mandatory market – a market with a selling price of up to several hundred USD/credit. The voluntary market is easy to participate in, but there will be a time for assessment standards. If the deadline is exceeded, the system will automatically return the carbon credit to zero. The mandatory market does not have to adjust the quota, while the voluntary market adjusts it every year. Many countries, including Vietnam, have gradually increased this quota as a way to demonstrate responsibility in the NDC – a voluntary commitment of each country. The issue of carbon pricing is also very important when participating in the carbon credit market.
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