Vietnam Accelerates Efforts To Comply With EUDR Despite Time Given With One-Year Delay – CoffeeTalk

The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is a significant environmental policy in recent years, promoting deforestation-free agricultural trade. Vietnam has prioritized building a comprehensive and reliable data system to track the origins of agricultural products, aiming to achieve a “low-risk” classification for deforestation, which would allow for simplified assessment procedures. However, the European Union announced a one-year delay in the EUDR’s implementation at the end of 2024, with large enterprises and operators having until December 30, 2025, and small and micro enterprises an extended deadline of June 30, 2026.

Despite this delay, Vietnam has not slowed its efforts. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and local authorities have consistently disseminated information and organized technical training sessions for businesses, associations, localities, and farmers to ensure that Vietnamese agricultural products fully meet traceability requirements. The MARD has praised the EUDR as a driver for Vietnam’s agricultural strategy, emphasizing transparency, accountability, sustainability, and green growth.

Implementing the EUDR requires extensive cross-sectoral collaboration. If just one of the seven regulated sectors – livestock, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soybeans, and timber – is classified as “high risk,” the entire agricultural sector of a country could face heightened scrutiny. In the initial phase of the EUDR Adaptation Action Plan, Vietnam identified its most significant challenges: the absence of comprehensive information systems, plantation location data, and forest maps that align with the EUDR’s cutoff date of December 31, 2020.

After more than a year of fostering public-private partnerships from central to local levels, Vietnam achieved a significant milestone in December 2024 with the official launch of an EUDR-compliant database system for forest and coffee-growing areas. These proactive efforts have garnered recognition from the European Union (EU) Delegation, which views Vietnam as a leader in sustainable agricultural development.

The Vietnamese rubber and coffee industry has also adapted to the EUDR, with Nestlé Vietnam actively working to address challenges related to deforestation-free coffee production. Nestlé Vietnam works closely with suppliers and certification bodies such as 4C and Rainforest Alliance to ensure that agricultural ingredients meet sustainability standards. Significant investment has been made in research and development (R&D) to promote sustainable agriculture, improving crop yields, reducing environmental impacts, and developing flexible farming systems better adapted to climate change.

Read More @ Krishak Jagat