Research Reports
Prospect of Changes in the Farmland Utilization Pattern after Rice Market Opening Negotiations and Countermeasures
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AuthorKim, Hongsang
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Publication Date2005.12.01
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Original
The negotiations on rice market opening and the DDA agricultural negotiation under the WTO system have urged the Korean government to further open the domestic agricultural market, especially the rice market. If the wider rice market opening materializes, it will result in decreasing the profitability of rice industry and the decrease in rice field acreage. Rice fields account for about 54.5 percent of entire cultivated farmland and 89.8 percent of paddy fields. The decrease of rice fields will change the pattern of farmland utilization and farmland market (farmland price, rent rate etc.).
The purpose of this study is to prospect the changes in the pattern of farmland utilization and farmland market after negotiations on the rice market opening are closed, and to suggest policy directions related to farmland use and management.
The results can be summarized as follows: First, the farmland utilization will show the pattern of concentration on rice farming, and the problem of rice over-production will continue until 2014. It is forecast that the profitability of other agricultural products will decrease much steeper than rice under the influence of DDA agricultural negotiations, and the government needs to rearrange the farmland use to cope with rice market opening. Second, the acreage of idle paddy fields and uplands will increase, because the former rice fields will not be transformed to the fields growing other agricultural products. Third, the farmland price will decrease smoothly, and the difference among regional land prices will be widened (especially, farmland price of rural areas will decrease more rapidly than that of urban areas in line with the decrease of rice price). Fourth, farmers will respond differently to the changing environments of farmland market by age, farm size, and main products. Fifth, farmland policies have to be reorganized according to the changes in the farmland market and farmers' preference for the type of farmland use and ownership. In particular, the government needs to take a measure to stabilize the farmland market of rural areas and to increase the existing rice farm size through "farm size enlargement projects" with a focus on younger and large-scale farm managers.
Researchers: Kim Hong-sang, Kim Bae-sung
E-mail: hskim@krei.re.kr
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