Research Reports
Study on the Development Strategies of Regional Agricultural Clusters in Korea
-
AuthorKim, Jeongho
-
Publication Date2005.12.01
-
Original
1. Goal and Objectives
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) has launched 20 model projects of the regional agricultural cluster (RAC). RAC is an important policy measure which aims at forming various agriculture related businesses in a certain area into 'agri-industrial cluster' as a main body of regional innovation system which could boost up household incomes and regional economy. In addition, RAC signifies a transition of agricultural policy approach in order to transform the scattered individual policy loan and investment projects without systematic perspective into an effective regional agricultural system which might improve the impact of policy investment on regional agricultural development.
This study aims at identifying regional agricultural innovation competences, and examining their potentials and their environment, regarding results, and presenting strategic policy measures for development of RAC by means of analyzing the 20 model RAC projects.
2. Main Contents
This study points out that the term 'regional agricultural cluster' defines it as 'in a certain local area, all kinds of agriculture-related businesses, which are engaged in producing, processing and marketing of a certain agricultural products specified to the local area, universities and research institutes, and regional administrations and farmer's autonomous organizations form a network, and generate synergic effects of regional agricultural innovation by balancing competition and cooperation among them." This study also argues that it would be a good signal for agricultural development, if the agri-industrial cluster makes a close functional connection between farming and other activities and then establishes a novel leading group for the regional agriculture through the networking among the participants.
The core of industrial cluster policy is to reinforce the networking between participated groups. The cluster policy aims at supporting creative growth of the regional economic actors by way of eliminating instable factors against regional agricultural systems. Especially, agri-industrial cluster does not try to establish a novel industry, but to improve and reinforce those businesses specified to an area in existence.
In addition, the result would support that forming 100 RAC by 2013 is appropriate to make the regional agriculture competitive and to increase the household incomes in rural areas, therefore, local governments should choose a regionally specialized agricultural item for the preparation of RAC. It would be reasonable that forming one RAC in a county or city policy would be supported by this study.
Since the formation and development of agri-industrial cluster entirely depends on the capability of local governments and the participants, the priority should be given to provide the local governments and the participants with the basis for capacity building in order to promote endogenous local development. It is very important to clearly define the role of the participated actors in a cluster, and should be improved further to facilitate a close network between the individual actors of the cluster. The central government should set out national framework, so that agri-industrial clusters could be easily settled down in a local area as soon as possible. In this regards, the government should set an infrastructure for RAC development which encompasses production, transaction and marketing, as well as, formulate agricultural system facilitating fair competition among the economic actors.
This study argues that the MAF should make the transition from scattered policy projects related to RAC to an integrated policy package for RAC development, and support R/D to help regional agricultural specialization, and need to bring up the specicialized consultants for RACs, and finally support regional agriculture experts and local government officials to form a supporting system for the RACs.
Researcher: Jeong-Ho Kim, Joon-Ki Park, Young-Saing Kim and Byoung-Hoon Lee
e-mail Address: jhkim@krei.re.kr
- Next
- Implementation Program for Introducing Regional-Based Maximum Nutrients Loading System
- Prev
- A study on the computation of standard yield for Chestnut Insurance Program