Vietnam has responded. On 1 July 2026, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment officially started operating its Agricultural Product Traceability System (Opens in new window), following a six-month pilot of durian. It uses international GS1 identification standards and QR-based digital links.
The rollout has been rapid. By mid-September 2026, over 800,000 products involving some 3,000 farming households and 207 businesses had been registered (Opens in new window) across 24 of Vietnam’s 34 provinces and cities. The government is now pushing ministries and localities to connect with the national system.
A QR code is an easy part. What matters is credible information (Opens in new window) behind it. A traceability system has international value only if buyers trust the information and their systems can use it.
The first challenge is data integrity. Vietnam’s agricultural supply chains involve millions of small farmers, cooperatives, traders, processors and exporters. Ensuring accurate and verifiable information will be difficult. Digitising unreliable data does not make it reliable.
The second challenge is whether Vietnam’s system can align with systems elsewhere. A national traceability platform that stops at the border will have limited value. Vietnam should therefore build around international standards wherever possible, allowing information to travel with products across borders.
Traceability could also help Vietnam demonstrate the environmental performance of its agricultural exports. Vietnam could gradually link traceability with credible environmental information, including water management and greenhouse gas emissions.
Rice is a good place to pilot. Vietnam’s one-million-hectare high-quality, low-emission rice (Opens in new window) program in the Mekong Delta is developing methods to measure, report and verify emission reductions, while Vietnam is exploring carbon finance for lower-emission rice.
Data showing where rice was grown, what inputs were used and how it was produced could also help demonstrate environmental performance. With credible methodologies and verification, such data may eventually support the measurement of agricultural emissions and emission reductions.
However, complicated digital requirements and certification costs can make it harder for smaller producers to participate. It will be crucial to keep the system simple and affordable.
The longer-term opportunity is to move beyond tracing a product’s origin towards showing how it was produced. An Australian buying a Vietnamese lychee could scan a code and verify its origin and whether it meets relevant standards.
Vietnam’s traceability system can help its exporters meet tougher market requirements. But its potential is greater than that. It could contribute to the infrastructure for a higher-value, lower-carbon agricultural economy (Opens in new window).
Success should not only be measured by how many QR codes appear on Vietnamese products, but also by whether buyers in Shanghai, Berlin, or Sydney trust what lies behind them.
If Vietnam gets the data right, makes its system work across borders, and gradually links traceability with credible environmental information, it could enable an genuine shift: from competing mainly on how much Vietnam exports to competing on what Vietnamese products can credibly demonstrate.
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