Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney has launched a document called Milestones for Success at the MacGill Summer School.
He said he would publish one of these every year to show what progress has been made and setting new targets for the year ahead.
Mr Coveney was speaking about the potential for Ireland to be a major food exporter and said we should export more and target premium markets around the world, which he said are growing.
'We need to focus on what segment of world markets for food we want to target and we are doing that,' he said.
He said the Food Harvest Plan 2020 was very much the driving force for this.
Earlier, Rowena Dwyer, economist with the IFA, said the Food Harvest document produced last year identified the potential of agriculture to increase farm gate output by €1.5bn and to grow out export value to €12bn annually within this decade.
She said that the growth recorded in 2010 and so far this year demonstrate that we are on track towards that target.
To achieve that, however, she said there were a number of challenges including the need to make farming more profitable if we are to attract and retain talented and committed farmers.
