Effort to overcome challenges
2025 is identified as a pivotal year, marking the initial stage of operation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment according to the new organizational model. In the context of increasingly high development requirements, the task is not only to stabilize the apparatus but also to soon affirm management capacity, choose the right focus, the right breakthrough point to complete the mission of the entire industry in the next stage.
2025 is also a year when the world situation is complicated with many difficulties and challenges. Increased trade tensions along with higher requirements for traceability, food safety regulations in agricultural exports... affect economic growth and development. Natural disasters and extreme weather occurring widely in the US, China, India... strongly impact commodity prices, world food security, increasing input materials for production and trade of agricultural, forestry and fishery products. Domestically, natural disasters and extreme weather diễn biến erratically, causing great damage to people, property and agricultural production situation.
In that context, the entire Agriculture and Environment sector has closely followed the Party's guidelines and policies, the State's policies and laws, and the requirements of practice, directing and operating "proactively, drastically, flexibly, synchronously, with focus and key points from the early days and months of 2025". Thanks to that, crop production, livestock, and aquaculture maintain stability and continue to develop, ensuring the supply of essential food and foodstuffs to meet domestic consumption requirements, contributing to firmly ensuring national food security and promoting exports.
According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, agricultural, forestry and fishery export turnover in 2025 reached 70.09 billion USD, an increase of 12% compared to the previous year - exceeding the target assigned by the Government. Among them, many key export items with high export value include: Wood and wood products reaching 17.32 billion USD, seafood reaching 11.32 billion USD, coffee reaching 8.57 billion USD, vegetables and fruits reaching 8.56 billion USD,...
One of the most obvious bright spots of Vietnam's agricultural, forestry and fishery exports in 2025 lies in the shift from selling "quantity" to selling "quality". In which, the export value of coffee increased by 13.1% in volume and increased by 52.5% in value, pepper decreased by 2.6% in volume but increased by 24.9% in value, cashew nuts increased by 5% in volume and increased by 19.6% in value, livestock products increased by 17.4% in value, seafood for the whole year increased by 12.7% compared to the previous year, wood and wood products increased by 6.4% in value.
Regarding the market, for the whole year of 2025, it is estimated that the export value of agricultural, forestry and fishery products of Vietnam to Asia increased by 5.8%, America increased by 7.2%, Europe increased by 34.2%, Africa increased by 68.1% and Oceania increased by 9%. Regarding the detailed market, China, the US and Japan are still the 3 key markets with increases of 15.9%, 5.4% and 20.5% respectively.
With positive results, agriculture continues to affirm its role as the pillar of the economy. The signals of 2025 show that Vietnamese agriculture is entering a new, more solid and promising growth cycle.
Breakthrough momentum in 2026
2026 is forecast to continue to face many difficulties and challenges, especially the impacts of climate change, resource depletion, environmental pollution and biodiversity degradation, directly affecting food security and people's livelihoods. In the context of increasingly comprehensive management requirements, the implementation of international commitments on emission reduction, green growth, nature conservation and transition to low-emission agriculture models poses great pressure on resources and management capacity.
Faced with that requirement, the 2026 goal of the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment is to strengthen resource management, environmental protection, improve resilience to climate change, promote the effectiveness of land, water, forest and biodiversity resources to serve sustainable agricultural development and the country's socio-economy. The entire industry also sets a target of total export turnover of agricultural, forestry and fishery products reaching 73 - 74 billion USD.
Talking to Lao Dong Newspaper, Minister of Agriculture and Environment Tran Duc Thang affirmed that the 2026 target of the entire industry is not only the turnover figure but also a healthy growth structure, capable of resisting fluctuations, helping Vietnam maintain its export momentum and enhance its position in global green supply chains.
With the mindset of "growth goes hand in hand with quality and sustainability", in 2026, the Ministry will continue to focus on standardizing and expanding international standard raw material areas, accelerating digital traceability to each batch, considering data as a new infrastructure to shorten certification time, reduce compliance costs for small and medium-sized enterprises. Along with that is a strategy to increase the proportion of deep processing and green logistics, shifting from increasing volume to increasing value per product unit, taking advantage of the space of key industries.
Some strategic focuses of the sector in 2026 include restructuring industries, improving quality, building national brands for Vietnamese agricultural products; promoting digital transformation, e-commerce, traceability and transparency of value chains; developing green economy - circular economy - low emissions; proactively responding to climate change, protecting resources and environment... to create a fulcrum and resources for national development in the new period," Minister Tran Duc Thang shared.
Another prominent highlight in 2025 of the Agriculture and Environment sector is the work of building and completing national databases, especially the national database on land. The Ministry has completed the construction of this database and implemented the "90 days to get rich, clean up land data" campaign in a very tight time, with a particularly large workload, scope of implementation nationwide, with the participation of many ministries, sectors, and localities, in the context that many areas are adversely affected by natural disasters and floods.
After 90 days of implementation, a total of 61.72 million land plots have been reviewed, updated and revised; of which more than 24.37 million land plots meet the criteria of "right - sufficient - clean - living", meeting the conditions for operation in real time, connecting and sharing with other national databases. This is considered a very large step forward in the quality of land data compared to the previous period.
Along with that, the work of building and perfecting laws is also particularly focused on by the sector. In the context of rapidly changing development models, institutions are identified as having to go one step ahead, promptly removing bottlenecks that are hindering production, business and investment. The Ministry clearly stated: Each legal document promulgated must ensure stability, synchronization, feasibility, and truly become a lever for development, not a barrier to innovation.
