Vietnam launches circular economy push to cut food loss and waste

On a Wednesday in mid-August, Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Environment gathered officials, researchers, and business leaders in a workshop aimed at reshaping how the country thinks about food. The event, co-hosted with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation and Denmark's embassy, was ostensibly timed to mark the approaching International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste on September 29. But the real work was more urgent: Vietnam is trying to move from talking about waste to actually stopping it.

The centerpiece was a draft White Paper on Food Loss and Waste, prepared jointly by Vietnam's Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Environment and the FAO. This document is meant to become the foundation for how the government shapes policy going forward—a shift from scattered studies and isolated pilot projects toward something coordinated and measurable. The workshop opened the paper to scrutiny, inviting stakeholders to punch holes in it, suggest revisions, and help shape what comes next.

What made the day substantive, though, was the parade of practical solutions on display. These weren't theoretical. Paddy dryers that preserve rice after harvest. Modified atmosphere packaging—MAP technology—that extends shelf life by controlling the air around food. Methods for turning agricultural leftovers into something valuable: organic fertiliser from crop residue, straw mushrooms grown on waste material, straw pellets for fuel or bedding. Even industrial waste streams from pork and chicken processing, and from breweries, were presented as raw material for something better. The circular economy, in other words, wasn't an abstraction. It was a business model waiting to be scaled.

But scaling requires more than good ideas. A panel discussion zeroed in on the real obstacles: policy gaps that make it hard to commercialize these solutions, lack of financing mechanisms, and technical standards that haven't caught up to what's possible. Nguyen Do Anh Tuan, director general of the Ministry's International Cooperation Department, framed the challenge plainly: Vietnam needs to move from awareness to action, from isolated studies to evidence that actually informs decisions, from pilot models to solutions that work everywhere, and from individual agencies working alone to a coordinated push across the entire system.

The FAO's Vinod Ahuja pushed the thinking further. The goal, he said, isn't simply producing less waste. It's keeping value in the food system as long as possible, at the highest level possible. Scaling doesn't mean doing more projects; it means creating conditions where good solutions can grow on their own momentum. Mette Ekeroth, Denmark's deputy head of mission, added that waste can be the beginning of a new process, not just the end of one. The real value, she suggested, comes when one initiative's lessons become another's starting point.

What emerged from the room was a kind of consensus on why this matters. Reducing food loss and waste delivers what participants called a triple win: it strengthens food security and nutrition for a country that still has hungry people, it cuts greenhouse gas emissions from rotting food and inefficient systems, and it creates economic growth in the green sector. These aren't separate goals. They reinforce each other. A farmer who uses a paddy dryer keeps more rice to sell, reduces methane from decomposition, and builds a business. A brewery that turns spent grain into animal feed or fuel solves a disposal problem while creating revenue.

The workshop's output—recommendations and insights gathered from participants—will now feed into a finalized White Paper and an inter-agency action plan. What happens next depends on whether Vietnam's government can translate this coordination into actual policy, financing, and technical standards. The machinery is in place. Whether it moves is another question.