韓國의 畜産과 飼料資源

The Livestock Industry and Feed Supply in Korea

The demand for livestock products has increased rapidly in recent years as income and population increased in Korea. In contrast with the prospective demand for animal protein, the potentiality of its supply is strictly limited by various conditions. This is a contradictory problem of the livestock industry in this country. Most of all, Korea is faced with a food deficiency. Although the increases in food production have been substantantial, it has not kept pace with the expansion of food consumption. The level of food self-sufficiency has declined significantly during the last 10 years. About one-third of total domestic food consumption is imported. Thus approximately seven billion dollars, which accounts for nearly half of the nation’s annual net exports, is consumed for this purpose. As long as there is no particular counter-measure, the food shortage problem will grow worse in the future. Therefore, the maximum utilization of available resources to produce more grains is vitally important in order to meet the increase in demand for domestic food consumption and to save foreign exchange. In general, the livestock industry and food grain production compete with each other in their resource use. Moreover, according to an up-to-date study, it is understood that the consumption of one unit calorie of energy through livestock products requires seven to nine times as many farm resources as consumption of basic cereal products. In spite of the situations mentioned above, during the last ten years the Korean livestock industry has expanded significantly. The number of the most important livestock has increased noticeably over the period between 1961 and 1972: the number of Korean cattle have increased 29 percent, beef cattle 27 times, dairy cows 37 times, pigs 69 percent and chickens 2.6 times respetively Especially, we can not neglect the fact that the characteristics of the Korean livestock industry have greatly changed in two ways: one is that the average size of the livestock business have enlarged visibly and the other is that the nature of the livestock industry has specialized by requiring concentrated feed animals. These two big changes made worse the competition of resource use and the foreign exchange situation. Therefore, the government policy for the livestock industry has to be taken under the following three conditions: first, to minimize the competition in land use between the food self-sufficiency program and livestock products, second, to minimize the allocation of foreign exchange for feed imports and third, to minimize the conversion of grains for animal feed. As a consequence, the author is going to suggest the following three policies for the Korean livestock industry: 1. Livestock as a subsidiary business Since there are no great sources of domestic feeds for animals, at the present, the Korean livestock industry has to be a subsidiary type. Otherwise increased competition in land use between food and livestock production could not be avoided. In addition, the increasing pace of feed imports could worsen our foreign trade balance. Indeed, the annual amount of imports already exceeds the annual amount of exports, and the annual payment for the foreign debt amounts to about six billion dollars. At the present stage, the Korean livestock industry requires the following: (1) maximum utilization of facilities and equipment already existing on the farm, (2) effective use of all the field grass and hillside grass and agricultural by-products such as straw, soybean hulls etc. as feed, (3) by increasing the use of idle labor forces which widely exist in the farm areas, increase the farm income, (4) and improve the fertility of soil by using livestock by-products. 2. Enlarge the average size of livestock business When enough sources of feed are developed, by establishing new pastures, converting mass amounts of straw into feed, and developing any other unused resources such as sea weed as feed, th