Giving Compass' Take:

• Food Tank talks with Kyoungsoo Lim, Former Director of Jeonju City Urban Regeneration Support Center in South Korea, about revitalizing rural economies in South Korea through agriculture. 

• What areas need the most assistance? How is climate change a factor in this issue? 

• Learn more about innovations in climate-smart agriculture that are offering South Asian farmers prosperity. 

People are getting older and older in South Korea and the aged population is especially concentrated in rural areas. During the country’s rapid industrialization, many people from rural areas moved to cities for educational and job opportunities. “Numerous young people left rural communities when they found no possible ways to earn good money by farming,” Kyoungsoo Lim, Former Director of Jeonju City Urban Regeneration Support Center in South Korea, tells Food Tank. The average age of a Korean farm manager increased from 61.0 in 2005 to 65.6 in 2015, putting future food security at risk.

“The free market does not work for agriculture,” Lim says to Food Tank. The laws of supply and demand do not effectively determine the prices of produce, and farmers cannot respond promptly to changes in demand. It takes several months to grow food, and farmers cannot cease growing in the middle of the year despite of the demand decrease—the price elasticity of supply is low. As a result, produce prices fluctuate from year to year. “But the government keeps letting the free market regulate produce prices and it fails to do so,” Lim says. “Policymakers focus more on helping farmers sell their products to supermarkets. However, these are not solving the fundamental problems.”

Read the full article on revitalizing rural economies in South Korea by Min Hyun Maeng at Food Tank.