The Agricultural Situation of North Korea
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THE AGRICULTURAL SITUATION OF NORTH KOREA Woon-Keun Kim Research Director, Center for North Korea Agriculture, Korea Rural Economic Institute 4-102, Hoigi-Dong, Dongdaemun-Ku, Seoul 130-710, Korea ABSTRACT The recent food shortages in North Korea are the result of climatic disasters, some problems with collective farming, and the economic difficulties which began in the early 1990s. As economic difficulties resulted in a shortage of energy, and of raw materials such as fertilizer and agricultural chemicals, agricultural productivity decreased. The situation was made even worse by the cold weather, floods, and droughts which have occurred frequently since 1993. Thus, the food situation in North Korea is now in a state of difficulty. Recently some policy changes are giving encouraging results. LAND TENURE SYSTEM tives, which so far had been based on the traditional village unit, were merged to make a single collective In North Korea, most economic decisions in each Ri (the smallest administrative unit, equiva- are made by the central government, in the form lent to a district). As a result, the number of either of economic plans or specific instructions. collectives fell from more than 50,000 to only 4,000, Agricultural policies have been closely linked with while their average size expanded to around 500 ha, the national goals of a series of economic plans each containing about 300 farm households. Today, formulated by the government. All decisions con- the average farm size in North Korea is 466 ha (1,151 cerning production targets, distribution of outputs, acres). Each farm is operated by 80 - 300 farm allocation of inputs, prices and marketing were made families. according to these plans. Cooperative farms account for 90% of cul- One of the first acts of the North Korean tivated land and agricultural production, and state government after it was established in 1946 was land farms for 10%. State farms are model farms run as reform. Under the Land Reform Act, nearly 54% of industrial enterprises. They are generally larger and cultivated land in private ownership was confis- more highly mechanized than collectives, and are cated. All land holdings held under continuous also managed more efficiently. The management of tenancy or in excess of 5 ha (12.3 acres) was also collective farms is in the hands of management confiscated. By August 1958, all individual peasant committees made up of agricultural and technical farmers had been absorbed into the newly created experts. The committee sets production quotas, collectives. allocates resources, determines and disburses wages, Immediately after the completion of collec- monitors credit and directs the use of seeds, tractors tivization, a major program was launched to expand and fertilizers. The collective farms have also devel- the scale of farming. The government considered oped the Chongsan-ni method of management, a that the prevailing size of collectives was too small to personalized, on-the-spot guidance method which realize economies of scale, particularly for the use of requires management committees to help farmers to farm machinery. Farm mechanization was regarded improve production through incentives and other as one of the most powerful ways of transforming encouragement. traditional farming into a modern system. All collec- Along with the expansion of farms into Keywords: collective farms, cropping system, fertilizer, food shortage, irrigation, mechanization, North Korea, pest control. 1 larger units, non-agricultural institutions such as by bench terraces; health clinics, elementary schools, kindergartens, • Distribution of tractors to achieve 10 and community dining halls were established on each tractors per 100 ha; cooperative farm. Individual farmers were given • Application of 2 mt/ha fertilizer; small private plots to cultivate for themselves. The • Production of 900,000 mt of meat per size of plots is limited to 30-50 pyong (100-170 m2), annum; depending on the size of the family. Farmers are • Production of 1.5 million mt of fruits. allowed to grow vegetables, fruit trees and other To boost agricultural production, North cash crops, and to raise poultry, pigs and bees, both Korea developed “specialized production areas” for for consumption at home and for sale at farmer's corn, livestock, fruits and some selected industrial markets. crops. It provided intensive support, both financial and technical, to the State and collective farms AGRICULTURAL POLICY located in these designated regions. Research em- phasized improved varieties of corn and soybean, as North Korean agricultural policies are di- part of an effort to encourage double-cropping. rected towards solving the problem of food short- In spite of all these efforts to increase ages through the “four improvements” in agricul- agricultural production, the actual growth rate was tural technology: irrigation, farm mechanization, not as high as expected. In order to solve this rural electrification, and agricultural chemicals. The problem, North Korea has made efforts to increase government has also carried out a number of recla- the area of arable land since the 1980s. mation projects to increase the area of arable land. However, the damage from recent natural Priority has been given to improving the disasters has been exacerbated by the overuse of agricultural infrastructure, especially expanding irri- land. The floods of 1995 caused widespread land- gation facilities, and terracing and draining new slides in the terraced fields constructed in these arable land. In order to become self-sufficient in nation-wide programs. In that year 300,000 ha was fertilizers, North Korea has built new fertilizer plants. inundated. Even after the floods receded, 100,000 Agricultural research and guidance services have ha were left covered in sand and gravel. This been expanded to improve farming technology, par- explains why the arable area has sharply decreased in ticularly the application of fertilizers and pesticides. recent years. A program was begun to replace the production of Current agricultural policies in North Ko- miscellaneous cereals (Italian millet, milo etc.) by rea emphasize improvement of the agricultural infra- corn. The area of arable land planted in corn structure, increased potato production, expansion of increased from 10% in 1953 to 35-40% in the 1990s. the double cropping system, seed improvement and Agricultural development strategies in the adjustment of land holdings. 1970s and 1980s had the broad objective of balanced Under the new leadership of Kim Jong-Il, development for agriculture and industry. Some there was some expectation of changes in agricul- features of the Six-Year Plan (1971-76) and the tural policy. However, North Korea decided that second Seven-Year Plan (1978-84) were: there would be no changes, but instead a strengthen- • Improvement of rural living conditions ing of the socialist central economic system. It and rural infrastructure; declared that cooperative management would be • Expansion of foodgrain production to gradually transformed into a state management sys- achieve self-sufficiency; tem. Extension and administration in rural areas • Development of land and water resources would conform to the principles and methods of the to protect farmers from unfavorable cli- 1964 Thesis on Agriculture by Kim Il-Sung. matic conditions; North Korea is now improving agricultural • Accelerated farm mechanization so as to production by promoting crop diversification, and free farm workers from heavy manual la- supplementing agricultural chemicals with organic bor. farming methods. Under Kim Il-Sung, maize be- Specific targets were: came the single most important upland crop through- • Annual production of 10 million mt of out North Korea. This policy did not take fully into grain; account the wide variation in soils and climate in • 100% irrigation of non-rice upland crops; mountainous areas, where before 1945 many differ- • Reclamation of 150,000 ha of slopeland ent crop species and varieties had been cultivated. In some cases, overzealous agricultural 2 administrators and specialists attempted to please Farm Population Kim Il-Sung by recommending extremely high-den- sity planting and heavy applications of chemical According to FAO data, the total popula- fertilizer for a very limited number of varieties and tion of North Korea in 1997 was 22.8 million, of hybrids of the two major crops, rice and maize. The whom 29.6% are involved in agricultural produc- current program of diversification is a major im- tion. This percentage is much lower than in 1965, provement on the uniform maize-based cropping when 40.8% of the population was agricultural. system formerly prevalent throughout most of North Farm labor accounts for about 40% of the Korea. total labor force in North Korea, which is higher than The current crop diversification program, the 11% in the South. The rather low labor produc- which began in 1999, aims to increase potato pro- tivity in the North is because the country uses outside duction either by double cropping or by replacing labor such as students and soldiers at planting and unproductive second crops of maize by potato after harvest. A major problem is that as in South Korea, crops of small grains (especially spring barley and the average age of full-time farmers is fairly high. winter wheat). This emphasis on potato production for increased food security is a significant policy Irrigation and Drainage change. Diversification does not mean that potato Water conservation