Sustainable agricultural development is global issue. This paper focuses on the concept of sustainable agricultural development, the approaches to sustainable development, and briefly presents some strategies of sustainable agricultural development from some countries as well as the practices in Vietnam. There are many approaches to sustainable development, however all aim to change producers' behavior based on the principles of sustainable production. Vietnam is actively developing sustainable agriculture, many policies have been issued. However, there is a big gap between practice and policy. Vietnam lacks the value chain management based on sustainable production and policies for farmers to practice sustainable development. When unsustainable production practice still brings more benefit, even greater than sustainable one, the development of sustainable agriculture still faces difficulties.