Research Reports
A Study on the Current Status and Performance of Agroforestry System in Korea
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AuthorMin, Kyungtaek
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Publication Date2013.12.30
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Original
The objectives of the study are to examine the current status and performance of the agroforesty system in Korea, making some policy suggestions to rehabilitate it. Agroforestry system includes both traditional and modern land-use systems where crops and/or animals are produced together with trees in wood production setting. Agroforestry system can enhance ecosystems as providing carbon storage, greater biodiversity and less erosion.
The types of agroforestry system in temperate regions are forest farming, silvopasture, windbreaks, riparian forest buffer, alley cropping, and special application. The most common types of agroforestry in Korea are forest farming and silvopasture. Some farmers are cultivating shiitake mushroom, ginseng or wild vegetables (e.g. Ligularia fischeri (Ledeb.) Turcz., Allium microdictyon Prokh.) under the trees. The others are raising goats or cows in the forest, which can cause various environmental problem if not properly managed.
Driving the private owners to have interests in forestry is crucial in sustainable forest management in Korea. Owing to the steep terrain and low forest infrastructure, the timber production in Korea is not profitable. Thus, private forest owners have more interests in cultivating non-timber forest products such as chestnut, or mushroom rather than producing timber or timber related to raise income. In that sense, the agroforestry, which is a land-use system to raise income from forests with promotion of ecological functions of forests, becomes relevant in Korea.
In order to generate more income from the forest as well as to realize sustainable forest management, the Korea Forest Service have subsidized agroforestry system in many ways since 1999. However, the current condition of agroforesty in Korea is not bright, suffering from low profitability and various land and forest related regulations. When compared with the farming from open field, the agroforestry generally shows lower productivity per unit area as well.
Nonetheless, we can expect to see alive agroforesty in the future if we can remove some obstacles. The 55% of the farmers who are engaged in agroforesty answered that their business are properly managed and the 74% of them have plan to expand the agroforestry farm size. The obstacles raised by them are 'to secure the operating cost', 'dubious administrative procedure', 'shortage of labor', 'to secure outlet' so on. It implies that we need to consider some policy remodeling with regard to subsidy, regulation, and procedures.
According to the survey, consumers generally have high demand for the naturally grown forest products, as they believe the one from the forest has more nutritions and functioning compounds than the one cultivated in the field. Hence, they are willing to pay more for the one from the forest but only when the quality and genuinity can be guaranteed. To cope with the demand of consumers properly, it may be necessary to provide a certification system and or history tracking system for the forest grown products.
In many countries, agroforesty sheds new lights as an alternative of single product farming. Most of the advanced countries including the US and EU have supported agroforesty, being recognized ecological and economical functionality of it.
Based on the policy evaluation, survey, and country review, we propose some tasks to promote agroforestry in Korea. First, we need to upgrade the agroforestry to the level of 6th industry as combining production with tourism. To become higher value-added business, agroforestry should be expanded to processing, selling and experience. Second, as noted earlier, we need to have a certification system for the forestry products to differentiate market with others, which will makes the consumers to buy more and pay more. Third, it is necessary to have some policy consideration. We need to institutionalize agroforetry management, expand production foundation and infrastructure, have better access the forest, relieve regulations, and provide financial supports directly or indirectly. Fourth, in order to be able to suggest appropriate models of agroforesty in different regions, we need to expand the study and related budget for conducting researches to grow various forest products in various forest and human resource conditions.
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