Here’s a summary profile of the agricultural sector in Vietnam:

The area in Vietnam with the most smallholder farms is the Mekong River Delta region. This region is crucial for Vietnam’s agriculture, with about 1.5 million smallholder farmers relying on rice as their primary livelihood. These farms typically grow rice on small plots, producing 2 or 3 crops annually. The Mekong River Delta faces challenges such as reduced returns to farmers, soil degradation, environmental pollution, and declining seed purity and grain quality. Efforts are being made to improve the productivity and sustainability of rice farming in this region, including policies aimed at reducing total rice production while focusing on high-quality rice for export markets【1】.

Additionally, efforts are made to improve the skills, livelihoods, and incomes of smallholder farmers in various regions of Vietnam, including the Central Highlands and Northwest regions, which also have significant numbers of smallholder farms. These initiatives involve supporting sustainable farming and livelihood systems and enhancing farmers’ engagement in domestic and international markets【1】.

In Vietnam, smallholder farmers typically cultivate very small plots of land. The average size of these plots is approximately 0.4 hectares (or 4,000 square meters). 【2】 To put this into perspective, this average farm size is less than one-third that of neighboring countries like Thailand or Cambodia. Vietnam’s overall endowment of agricultural land per person, at 0.3 hectare or 【2】, is among the lowest in the world. This small scale of individual farms is a defining characteristic of Vietnam’s agricultural sector.

【1】https://www.aciar.gov.au/publication/aop2021/vietnam
【2】https://www.fao.org/3/I8358EN/i8358en.pdf