In Vietnam, the dairy sector has emerged since the 2000s, in response to the rapid growth of the demand for dairy products. After having supported small-scale dairy production farms, the national policies since 2008 (the “2020 Livestock Development Strategy” in 2008, and the “Livestock sector Restructuring Action Plan towards greater Added Value and Sustainable Development” in 2014) highlighted the government's priorities for large-scale and industrial farms. Those recent programs focused on reducing the import dependency to meet the increasing domestic demand and improving price competitiveness vis-à-vis imported dairy products. However, in the context of a rapid transition of the economy and of the ecosystems, smallholder and family farms are still the mainstay of the agricultural sector and continue to play an important role in sustainable development. The present study raises the question of the viability, sustainability and inclusiveness of different dairy farming models, taking into account the land constraint (farmland availability: 0.8 ha per farm, 0.12 ha per capita), labor abundance, especially in agriculture (50% of the total active population) as well as the environmental challenges related to animal products value chains. This thesis aims to contribute to the current policy debates in Vietnam in order to know whether the future dairy sector should be based on family farming or on large-scale production. The first section is dedicated to the analysis of the structural and agrarian transformation in relation to the ongoing dynamics of the livestock and dairy sector more weighted on the larger commercial farms. To better understand the market dynamics, the second section characterizes the governance of the dairy value chain in the largest milk-shed in the Red River Delta (Ba Vi district, Ha Noi). Based on interviews with 70 actors involved in local dairy value chain, the thesis underlines factors shaping a mixed relational-captive governance and the close