| An Analysis of the Current Status and Success Factors of Smart Farms | |||
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| Author | Kim, Yeanjung | ||
| Views | 103965 | Publication Date | 2016.08.31 |
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Background of Research A smart farm refers to a farm that can remotely and automatically maintain and manage the growing environment of crops and livestock by utilizing ICT in vinyl houses, stables, orchards and so on. Concerning the current government's creative agriculture, new growth engines through IT-BT-NT convergence have also been sought in farming, and smart farms among them are receiving attention as a future industry combining ICT. Until now, however, smart farms in Korea have been at an early stage of development, and most farms do not know how to operate them. This is because of the absence of models that existing farms can follow or the lack of confidence in smart farms' effectiveness, despite their merits, productivity and quality improvement and labor saving. Therefore, it is necessary to pave the way for existing farms to understand smart farms easily and enter the market by examining cases of leading smart farms and their success factors and identifying reasons for their success. Method of Research The range of smart farms is extensive, including production, marketing, management, and rural and agricultural sectors. Nevertheless, considering that Korean smart farms are at a basic stage, this study covered only the production sector. We analyzed performance including production increases per unit area, quality enhancement, labor saving, and convenient farming through combining the production sector with ICT. To examine the present state of smart farms, we used data on farms utilizing ICT among the agricultural enterprises database, the Rural Development Administration report on survey results of the types of greenhouses, data on the current situation of farms managed by eight field support centers by area (Provincial Agricultural Research and Extension Services) and so forth. To derive the performance of smart farms, we referred to the following literature: Outstanding Cases of Convergence Between Agri-food and ICT published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs; Seoul National University's Performance Analysis of Sejong Creative Village; and the Korea Rural Economic Institute's Strategies and Tasks of ICT Convergence for the Creative Agriculture Realization. We also analyzed the outcomes of 67 leading smart farms. Research Results and Implications According to the results of the survey on leading smart farms, smart farms were introduced mostly by voluntary choice (74%), and most of them aimed at convenient farming and productivity improvement. The satisfaction level with investment in smart farms mostly exceeded 4.0 points on a five-point scale, showing a big effect of the pilot project. Nonetheless, only half of the farms collected their growth data and data on the operation of the computerized management program, indicating a great imbalance between hardware and software. Leading smart farms could concentrate on quality control of their agricultural products through smart farm facilities because their marketing channels have already been stabilized. The proportion of export of leading smart farms' products is about 40%, much higher compared to general farms. Thus, it is needed to continuously nurture candidates for competitive export complexes such as Sejong Smart Farm Complex. The utilization of ICT has led to increases in production and gross profit of leading smart farms. In controlled horticulture, production and gross profit rose by 44.6% and 40.5% respectively, compared to before the use of ICT. As for fruit grown outdoors, production grew by 3.4% and gross profit by 9.7%. With regard to controlled floriculture, production increased by 18.0% and gross profit by 34.4%. The success factors of leading smart farms are classified into five as follows. First, leading smart farms have created a better environment and saved labor by employing a smart control system (19.8%) and managing their farms based on data (39.5%). Second, they are positive about the possibility of smart farms' development and active in receiving professional consulting. Third, they are already carrying out related design suitable to their situation through synergy effects with existing technologies by accumulating know-how in the relevant field. Fourth, the farms could focus on quality control through ICT facilities because they have already secured marketing and export channels. Fifth, the introduction of the advanced system has become easier due to a decrease in the self-pay burden. The biggest factor in this seems to be offsetting the burden of the introduction of ICT as the state and local governments have supported expenses for government pilot projects. Researchers: Kim Yeanjung, Park Jiyun, Park Younggu Research period: 2016. 3. ~ 2016. 6. E-mail address: yjkim@krei.re.kr |
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