On March 3, 2026, Andong City in South Korea made a bold announcement: it would designate this year as the "Year of Agricultural Structural Transformation." The goal? To leap forward as a future-oriented agricultural city, using smart agriculture and youth engagement as the twin engines of change. But Andong is not alone in its quest for agricultural innovation. Thousands of kilometers away, Lam Dong Province in Vietnam is quietly leading a revolution of its own, building on years of technology transfer and farmer empowerment. Together, these two regions are shaping the future of sustainable farming in Asia—each with its own unique approach, but both facing the same urgent challenges of climate change, rural depopulation, and the need for higher value from the land.
According to a press release from Andong City, the municipality is responding to the "structural crisis" of agriculture—brought on by climate change, aging rural populations, and a shrinking workforce—by moving beyond traditional production systems. Their vision is for a sustainable agricultural ecosystem that puts data, technology, and people at its center. The plan is ambitious: use a 61.5-hectare open-field smart agriculture complex and a big data center as the backbone for a data-driven farming support system. This system will collect and analyze cultivation information from each farm, enabling customized farming services and, ultimately, boosting both productivity and management efficiency.
The city isn’t just talking about theory. On the ground, it’s expanding its smart farm control system to advance precision agriculture infrastructure. A 1,000-square-meter linked vinyl greenhouse smart agriculture testbed education center will serve as a hub for technology dissemination. Here, demonstration cultivation, data analysis, hands-on education, and consulting come together to help farmers adopt new tools and techniques. Projects like strawberry LED productivity improvement trials, smart unmanned pest control in facility horticulture, and the application of ICT technology will be scaled up, all with the aim of reducing labor and improving the uniformity of product quality.
But Andong’s transformation isn’t just about technology—it’s also about people, especially young people. The city plans to create rental-type smart farms to provide startup opportunities for young farmers, selecting 25 new young farmers in 2026 for systematic training and initial livelihood support. There’s a clear recognition that without a new generation of farmers, even the smartest technologies won’t secure the future of agriculture. To this end, the city will operate mentoring programs linking leading farmers with young prospective farmers, offer partial rent support through farmland bank lease contracts, and provide assistance for branding and packaging design to enhance product competitiveness. Stepwise management consulting will help these young entrepreneurs strengthen their expertise and build resilient businesses.
Andong isn’t stopping at production. The city is also pushing to create added value by supporting agricultural technology demonstrations and field-centered pilot projects that address farming difficulties, improve product quality, and diversify cultivation techniques. There are plans to expand processing, experience, and healing services using rural resources, aiming to turn agriculture into a high value-added industry. As one Andong City official put it, "2026 will be a turning point for Andong agriculture to become a competitive industry combining experience and technology, creating an environment where young people return and data accumulates to make agriculture a future growth engine."
Meanwhile, in Lam Dong Province, Vietnam, agricultural transformation has been underway for years, with a strong emphasis on agricultural guidance, technology transfer, and farmer capacity building. Lam Dong boasts over 1 million hectares of diverse and fertile farmland—ideal conditions for advanced technology agriculture, organic farming, and smart agriculture. As reported by Bao Lam Dong, the province has established itself as a leader in the field, developing large-scale production areas for crops such as flowers, vegetables, tea, coffee, chili, silkworms, and cold-water fish.
Over the past five years, Lam Dong has implemented more than 400 pilot projects in crop cultivation, livestock, and aquaculture, involving about 3,500 households. These projects have applied advanced technologies like IoT monitoring, VietGAP and GlobalGAP standards, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), and water-saving irrigation. The results are impressive: in the former Dak Nong area, high-quality rice, sustainable coffee, and VietGAP-certified vegetable cultivation models increased productivity by 10-20% and profits by 15-25%, while reducing irrigation water use by 15-30% and pesticide use by 20-40%. In the former Lam Dong area, advanced vegetable and flower cultivation and sustainable fruit farming generated annual revenues of 250 million to 800 million VND per hectare. And in the former Binh Thuan area, improved rice and certified dragon fruit cultivation raised selling prices by 10-15% and profits by 15-20%.
Lam Dong’s approach hinges on a robust network of agricultural guidance staff, who play a key role in information dissemination, technology transfer, and pest and disease monitoring. The province has established two pilot agricultural guidance groups and 215 extension groups, with a total of 2,172 members. These groups act as a bridge between farmers and enterprises, supporting the registration of durian cultivation area codes, obtaining VietGAP certifications, and backing 401 hectares of 4C coffee certification.
Education and communication are central to Lam Dong’s efforts. From 2020 to 2025, the province held 147 workshops with over 5,700 farmers participating, and 60 technical forums and seminars with over 4,400 participants. More than 25,600 agricultural guidance newsletters and 44,000 technical manuals have been published, along with 15 thematic programs and videos. Over 2,500 news articles have been posted on the province’s agricultural guidance website, which now receives 700,000 annual visits—a 20% increase since 2020.
Yet, as Nguyen Van Thuong, Director of Lam Dong’s Provincial Agricultural Guidance Center, candidly admits, there are still limitations. "The agricultural guidance business still has some limitations, such as an excessive focus on technology transfer without close linkage to market development and value chains," he noted. There’s also a shortage of human resources in management, digital transformation, and marketing, and a heavy reliance on the state budget.
Looking ahead, Lam Dong aims to address these gaps by focusing on science, technology, innovation, digital transformation, and linking agricultural activities more closely to markets and value chains. The province has set ambitious goals: achieving 5-5.5% annual growth in agriculture, developing agricultural guidance models for poverty reduction in over 70% of poor areas, ensuring that all guidance staff and professional farmers are trained, and implementing biosecurity, circular economy, organic farming, and climate change adaptation models in every locality. The sector will work to strengthen staff capacity, diversify communication, develop digital materials, and expand connections among enterprises, cooperatives, and farmers—all to enhance sustainable agriculture and improve rural quality of life.
From Andong’s smart farms and youth initiatives to Lam Dong’s guidance networks and high-tech pilot projects, the message is clear: the future of agriculture in Asia is being written today, on the ground, by those willing to innovate, educate, and adapt. As both regions push forward, their efforts offer a blueprint for others facing the same crossroads of tradition and transformation.