On August 11, 2026, the Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection, in collaboration with the Northern Centre for Crop Production and Plant Protection and the Dien Bien Department of Agriculture and Environment, organized a workshop in Dien Bien province to disseminate, popularize, and raise awareness of EUDR regulations for the coffee and rubber sectors. The workshop was attended by 76 delegates representing the Department of Agriculture and Environment, People's Committees of several communes and wards, and some village chiefs, secretaries, and Smallholder representatives of communities, hamlets, and villages in Dien Bien province.
Speaking at the opening of the workshop, Ms. Chu Thi Thanh Xuan, Deputy Director of Dien Bien Department of Agriculture and Environment, emphasized the importance of establishing Production area data. According to Ms. Xuan, Production area data is not only for serving customers in the European market, but also central to sustainable management and governance of production areas, especially for land management tasks and raw material area organization. A standardized Production area data, ensuring verifiability, with a mechanism for regular data updates and governance, is not only an urgent administrative requirement but also an opportunity to enhance the position of the locality in particular and Vietnam in general in the value chain.
Figure 1. Ms. Chu Thi Thanh Xuan, Deputy Director of Dien Bien Department of Agriculture and Environment, speaking at the opening of the workshop.
At the workshop, a representative from the Sub-Department of Agriculture, Dien Bien Department of Agriculture and Environment (DAE), presented an overview of the progress in implementing Plan No. 2025/KH-UBND dated March 20, 2026, on adapting to the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) in the province.
Dien Bien currently has approximately 19,576.7 hectares of coffee and 5,019 hectares of rubber. Dien Bien province identifies the development of concentrated raw material areas linked to processing, consumption, and export as a key task. By 2030, Dien Bien strives to develop over 20,000 hectares of coffee, forming raw material areas linked to deep processing, consumption, and export.
Regarding the current coffee development orientation, the establishment of Production area data, especially for "safe" and "green" coffee and rubber production areas, compliant with EUDR, is a very urgent task for the province. Currently, in addition to Chieng Sinh and Pu Nhi communes, which have implemented training on Production area data collection down to each plot (supported by Forest Trends), Dien Bien province has newly recorded that Tua Thang commune has proactively implemented data collection and submitted it to the DAE for synthesis.
Mr. Pham Dinh Lai, Head of the Sub-Department of Agriculture, Dien Bien DAE, also emphasized that in the context of limited resources, communes and wards can fully utilize various data collection tools, and even combine different resources and data sources, including cadastral data, self-collected data by residents, and data collected by agricultural and forestry officials and communal staff in the locality, to accelerate the progress of building the database.
Figure 2. Mr. Pham Dinh Lai, Head of the Sub-Department of Agriculture, Dien Bien DAE, speaking at the workshop.
Also presenting at the workshop was Ms. Nguyen Thi Hoai, a representative from the Department of Crop Production, Ministry of Agriculture and Environment. According to Ms. Hoai, state management agencies cannot stand aside in the process of adapting to EUDR because data and traceability issues require the involvement and inter-sectoral cooperation, especially from the agricultural, forestry, digital transformation, and land management sectors.
Currently, the Department of Crop Production has issued guidelines for adapting to EUDR for the rubber sector and will soon have specific guidelines for the coffee sector. In addition, the Department is also in the process of finalizing tools for Production area data collection and a national Production area data system to support localities and businesses in data collection and traceability implementation.
During the discussion session, delegates actively discussed upcoming plans related to Production area data collection. Mr. Lo Tung Lam, a representative from the People's Committee of Tua Thang commune, shared the commune's approach to collecting information for over 420 coffee plots, entirely based on the participation of hamlets, villages, and the involvement of the commune level.
However, many delegates from several communes and wards still had concerns related to the workload placed on the commune level, and the direction for resolving land issues, especially for high-risk raw material areas ("red" zones) after data collection is completed.
Figure 3. Mr. Lo Tung Lam, a representative from the People's Committee of Tua Thang commune, speaking and sharing his experience in collecting coffee Production area data without external support.
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