The third order: Exportation

With the motto of switching from agricultural production mindset to agricultural economic mindset, meaning that agriculture will have to create commodity value chains to be compatible with the market demand. Therefore, the first unignorable question is which markets our agriculture in the coming years will direct attention to in order to have enough motivation for development.

Domestic market: very large, but very small

First of all, in theory, it can be affirmed with certainty that, with 97.6 million consumers at present, this is not at all a small market for our agriculture to develop, as it ranks 15th in the world.

However, in fact, there are two strong enough bases to assert that our domestic market is too small for agriculture to develop.

First and foremost, although we have made great efforts, seized the opportunities, achieved the world's top achievement in promoting economic development in the past decade, which means increasing the income of the population to increase the domestic market’s purchasing power, but because the starting point is too low, the farmers' ability to consume agricultural products is still very limited.

Not only that, another extremely important matter is that, because the population in our rural areas is still too dense, meaning the force involved in agricultural production is still too large, making the number of agricultural products consumers is still too little.

Obviously, this is very disadvantageous for our country's agricultural production compared to the rest of the world. Because, with an estimated nearly 61.7 million rural population today, we are in the eighth "big" position in the world in this criteria, just behind the "two giants" India and China, and five very densely populated, and very densely rural inhabited, other countries in Asia and Africa. In terms of the rural population as a share of the total population, the current figure of 63.18% in our country is still almost one and a half times higher than the world average (44.35%).

Motivation source requires acceleration

In such a context, in order for agriculture to achieve a satisfactory growth rate in the past development, exports have played an increasingly important role.

If trading is said to be the driving force for the development of the economy in general and agriculture in particular, the domestic dynamics, although still playing a major role, have weakened, and vice versa, the role of exports are becoming more and more important. Particularly, in the context of severe difficulties like recently, it can be stated that outstanding efforts to maintain a smooth export channel of agricultural products are the "saviors" that help agriculture continue to develop.

The posed question is whether consumption or export will play a key role in increasing the driving force so that agriculture can continue to thrive in the coming years.

Most likely, the answer will only lie in option two

This is because, in order to achieve perhaps everyone's dream goal of USD 7,500/person by the end of this decade, the way we can't help but proceed is to accelerate industrial development. The goal is to increase the share of industry from about 33.7% at present to over 40% of the "GDP basket" by the end of this decade, as well as increase the added value of the processing industry to over USD 900/person at present to over USD 2,000 that the Socio-Economic Development Strategy to 2030 has affirmed is enough a statement.

However, the things mentioned above also mean that, although the domestic market will soon reach 100 million consumers, the purchasing power will remain to be "feeble" compared to farmers’ agricultural products consumption demand, not much different from the current state.

This owns to the fact that the "double" cause of the current situation will still continue. First of all, although the population in rural areas will certainly benefit as the industry and services shall thrive, there is no denying the fact that the population in urban areas will still gain greater benefit.

In the context that the purchasing power of the domestic market is increasingly weakened compared to the production capacity of the agricultural sector, in order to maintain the current growth rate, especially in the case of setting a higher growth target compared with the 2.83%/year growth rate achieved in the past decade, it is clear that accelerating agricultural exports will be the "savior".