In a context where consumers are increasingly concerned about food quality and origin, applying science and technology to agriculture is no longer an option but has become a mandatory requirement.

Among these advancements, traceability and product transparency are considered the “digital passport” helping Vietnamese agricultural products increase transparency, satisfy the increasingly stringent demands of the international market, and elevate competitive capacities amidst deep integration.

Resolving the "equation" of production chain transparency

Contributing opinions at a discussion session within the framework of the 9th National Congress of the Vietnamese Farmers' Union on June 7, Mr. Huynh Van Thon—Chairman of the Board of Directors and General Director of Loc Troi Group Joint Stock Company—expressed his anxieties regarding bringing science and technology into agriculture from his practical experience of many years accompanying farmers and directly deploying rice production models at grassroot levels.

According to him, introducing science and technology into agriculture, particularly in rural areas at present, is an exceptionally essential requirement but is by no means easy.

Farmers always desire to upgrade yields, slash costs, and ensure convenience in production, whereas the market imposes increasingly high requirements regarding quality, food safety, environmental protection, and sustainable development.

“Consumers want clean food but it must be cheap, which means it has to be delicious, nutritious, and affordable all at once. That is a very difficult equation for those working in agriculture,” Mr. Thon noted.

From the practical implementation of rice production models across An Giang, Ca Mau, and multiple other localities, Loc Troi Group chose to start from the narrative of food safety to build a new production chain.

According to Mr. Thon, if grains of rice appear daily in the meals of nearly 100 million people but consumers do not know where the product was grown, what seed was used, what inputs were applied, and what stages it underwent before reaching them, the goal of fully guaranteeing food safety remains unfulfilled.

That is also the reason why traceability is increasingly becoming an inevitable requirement. However, according to experts, traceability should not be understood merely as pasting a QR code onto packaging to serve sales activities.

The true essence of traceability is constructing a data system that runs seamlessly throughout the entire production chain—ranging from crop seeds, input materials, cultivation processes, harvesting, procurement, and processing to distribution and consumption.

When every link within the value chain is logged and transparently presented, consumers possess a foundation to hold greater trust in the product. Concurrently, legitimate enterprises are also shielded against fake goods, imitations, and trade fraud.

From an economic perspective, this is also a tool that helps elevate the added value of agricultural products. Amidst increasingly fierce global competition, production data and traceability capabilities are gradually becoming a "digital passport" for agricultural products to enter premium markets.

Quite a few nations currently treat traceability as a mandatory condition for imported goods. This means that whichever enterprise possesses a transparent data system will capture a larger edge in market access.

Technical infrastructure stands ready for national scale deployment

On a practical level, multiple localities have demonstrated that when production is organized toward transparency and traceability capabilities, the value of agricultural products improves noticeably.

In Son La—one of the pioneering localities in building raw material zones meeting export standards—numerous cooperatives have proactively digitized their cultivation logs, established growing area codes, and applied cultivation procedures aligned with international market standards.

The Xuan Tien Agricultural Cooperative (Yen Chau District) currently links production and consumption across about 60 hectares of round mangoes with 18 farming households. Faced with increasingly elevated requirements from import partners, members have altered their production habits, prioritizing biological preparations, limiting chemical plant protection substances, and strictly complying with cultivation log recording procedures.

Thanks to this, the cooperative's mango products are step-by-step accessing highly demanding markets such as Japan.

Similarly, plum-growing zones across Son La are also accelerating the construction of electronic logs, perfecting growing area dossiers, and participating in trade promotion activities to expand consumption markets.

Another clear testament is the Bich Thao Son La Cooperative with its 5-star OCOP certified coffee products. According to Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thao, Director of the Cooperative, building growing area log accounts, attaching traceability stamps, and standardizing production processes represent prerequisite conditions to safeguard the brand and expand export markets.

Thanks to strict compliance with standards from raw material zones to processing, the cooperative's coffee products are currently present across multiple fastidious markets such as the European Union (EU), Japan, and South Korea.

These outcomes prove that traceability is not merely a management tool but is becoming a lever to multiply value for Vietnamese agricultural products.

However, the journey to build a nationwide traceability system still confronts numerous challenges. Small-scale, fragmented production models, uneven technological application levels, alongside a lack of data interconnectedness among subjects within the value chain represent major barriers to the digital transformation process of the agricultural sector.

Nevertheless, experts argue that opportunities are unlocking as the technical infrastructure serving traceability is step-by-step being perfected.

At a meeting evaluating the implementation progress of the traceability system for agricultural, forestry, and fishery products at the end of May, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Hoang Trung emphasized that the basic technical infrastructure stands ready to receive and operate the system on a national scale.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the traceability system is not a new administrative procedure or a barrier for export enterprises. On the contrary, it is a tool serving governance, helping to transparently present information, upgrade the quality of state management, and multiply the capacity to monitor product quality.

In the coming period, along with perfecting the legal framework and expanding deployment across multiple flagship commodity sectors, the national traceability system is highly expected to establish the foundation for a comprehensive digital transformation in agriculture.

Source: Vnbusiness