On the afternoon of December 27, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development held a conference to review 2024 and deploy the 2025 plan. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attended and directed the conference.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in 2024, in addition to challenges and strong fluctuations in the world market, heat waves, historic floods, drought and salinity, and especially storm Yagi, caused damage to agricultural production of more than 31,000 billion VND.

However, the agricultural sector, together with the business community and farmers, have overcome difficulties to both ensure national food security and export agricultural products to bring in a record foreign currency of 62.5 billion USD, 9.5 billion USD higher than the previous year. This figure exceeded the target assigned by the Prime Minister by 7.5 billion USD.

Along with that, the agricultural trade surplus reached a new record of 18.6 billion USD, while in the 2015-2023 period, the trade surplus was only 6.5-12.2 billion USD. 

Speaking at the conference, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh emphasized three more outstanding achievements and results of the agricultural sector in 2024.

Firstly,  the prevention, control and overcoming of the consequences of storm No. 3, especially the consultation, organization, implementation of regulation, operation, and ensuring the safety of dams such as Thac Ba Hydropower Reservoir, Hoa Binh. At the same time, quickly stabilize the people's situation, not let anyone suffer from hunger, cold, lack of housing, students lack of schools, and quickly restore production after the storm.

Second,  the industry has affirmed the spirit of turning nothing into something, turning difficult into easy, turning impossible into possible. From the broken world market, domestic subsidence, drought, flooding, storms, but the agricultural sector still overcomes, both ensuring food security and exporting food, fruits, seafood,...

Third,  the industry promotes the application of science and technology, innovation, and digital transformation to respond to climate change, develop the digital economy, green economy, circular economy, and sharing economy…

In addition to the achieved results, the Prime Minister pointed out the limitations and weaknesses that the industry needs to focus on overcoming in the coming time, which are that the industry has not fully exploited and developed to the level of its distinct potential, outstanding opportunities, competitive advantages and rice civilization.

According to the Prime Minister, the work of building plans, strategies, institutions, mechanisms and policies to serve rapid and sustainable development is still limited. While these are very important issues.

The Prime Minister emphasized that the agricultural sector must focus on building brands and must have brands.

Evidence shows that Brazilian coffee is sometimes not as delicious as Vietnamese coffee, but the Brazilian coffee brand has spread throughout the world for decades... Therefore, the Prime Minister is concerned about how to build a brand so that Vietnamese coffee can surpass Brazilian coffee.

"When talking about coffee, people immediately think of Brazil. So when talking about coffee, do people think of Vietnam? If not, we have to do it. Have people thought of pepper and cashew nuts in Vietnam? If people don't think of them, we have to do it" - the Prime Minister said.

According to the Prime Minister, once there is a brand, there must be a planning of raw material areas. Third, there must be a market. Fourth, geographical indications, designs, and packaging. Fifth, there must be a source of capital to support farmers' production.

Source: Vinacas