Fruits and Vegetables

General information

Viet Nam’s geographical location spans multiple latitudes with a tropical monsoon climate and several distinctive microclimate regions such as Sapa, Tam Dao, and Da Lat, along with diverse soil conditions. These natural advantages provide Viet Nam with strong potential for the production and export of tropical, subtropical, and even temperate fruits and vegetables. The country currently cultivates around 120 types of vegetables and hundreds of different fruits. With advances in science and technology, off-season fruits and vegetables can now be grown and harvested, meeting both domestic consumption needs and export demands.

Among Viet Nam’s agricultural sectors, fruits and vegetables have seen remarkable breakthroughs in production capacity over the past five years, with expanding cultivation areas and increasing yields. Furthermore, Viet Nam’s participation in various bilateral and multilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) has significantly broadened global market access and boosted exports of fruits and vegetables worldwide.

However, the fruit and vegetable sector still faces numerous bottlenecks and challenges in production, processing, and market development. Small-scale farming remains dominant, while large-scale concentrated production zones are emerging but still rely heavily on small, scattered household farms, making investment, quality control, and marketing difficult. Although cultivation areas are expanding rapidly, production planning and linkage organization remain weak, and product quality is not yet high. Production costs are considerable, with significant post-harvest losses. Investment in preservation and post-harvest processing technologies has been slow, and deep processing remains limited. The market for Viet Nam’s fruits and vegetables remains heavily dependent on China, and food safety issues persist in both domestic and export markets.

Organization and objectives:

PPP TF on Fruits and Vegetables, chaired by PepsiCo, Syngenta, and National Agricultural Extension Center. The group's activities focus on the resources of its partners to develop Vietnam's horticulture industry and pursue the common goal of 20-20-20, increasing output, income for farmers, creating more jobs and reducing emissions. The TF has worked with government agencies and NGOs to help smallholders implement Good Agriculture Practices (GAP), initially focusing on growing potatoes in the provinces like Lam Dong (in the South), Hai Duong, Bac Giang, Vinh Phuc and Ha Noi (in the North), to expand to other vegetables and fruits for sustainable development of the industry.

Key outcomes:

PPP activities mainly focus on potatoes made by PepsiCo Vietnam. Over time, the potato production model has gained much success in terms of increasing productivity and income for farmers. Specifically:

- PepsiCo Vietnam's potato project helped increase productivity by 2.2 times compared to 2011, increased net profit by 6.5 times (equivalent to VND 65 million), increased the number of cooperative farmers to 500 farmers and the planted area to 4.5 times.

- Implement a spray irrigation model, saving over 1 million cubic meters of water.

- Train more than 1.6 million farmers on sustainable production.

- Put in 5 new varieties and sign contracts with about 1,000 farmers.

Members

MAE – National Agricultural Extension Center (Co-Chair)

Syngenta VietNam Ltd. (Co-Chair)

PepsiCo Foods Viet Nam Co. (Co-Chair)

VietNam Institute of Organic Agricultural Economics (VIOAE) 

Dong Giao Foodstuff Export JSC

Fresh Studio Innovations Asia

Fruit-Vegetable Export-Import JSC

LavifoodJSC

MAE–Institute of Strategy and on Agriculture and Environment (ISPAE)

Nafoods Group JSC

TH Milk JSC

The Fruit Republic