쌀농업 구조조정의 당위성과 한계

Necessity and Limitation of the Structural Adjustment of Korean Rice Agriculture

Korean rice farm operators consist of old-aged farms, part-time farms, medium-scale & full-time farms, and large-scale & full-time farms. Each type of farm operator has its own production objective and thus differently responds to price signals of the rice market. The difference of production cost is not much among each type of rice farm operator because not much of rice farming is being operated by machines. Moreover, net income per 10a of the farmland owned by small-scale rice farm is higher than that of the farmland leased by large-scale rice farms. With consideration of these situations, the structural adjustment policy for rice farming, which intends to transfer arable farmlands of small-scale farms to large-scale farms, is not desirable in light of both its equity and efficiency. Therefore, government should consider the need to enlarge the size cultivating land for the expansion of the total farm income and support farm income within diversity ways.