Agricultural Status and Soils in Korea

Abstract

Korea’s agriculture had many inherent problems. Korea is a mountainous country with only 22 percent farmland and less rainfall than most other neighboring rice-growing countries. A major land reform in the late 1940s and early 1950s spread ownership of land to the rural peasantry. Individual holdings, however, were too small or too spread out to provide families with much chance to produce a significant quantity of food. The enormous growth of urban areas led to a rapid decrease of available farmland, while at the same time population increases and bigger incomes meant that the demand for food greatly outstripped supply. The result of these developments was that by the late 1980s roughly half of Korea’s needs, mainly wheat and animal feed corn, was imported. Korea’s agriculture is facing a new round of difficulties from the inevitable process of market opening. Therefore, we have reviewed the agricultural status and soils in Korea how we can meet the coming issues with respect to production and prospect based on the government documents and articles published on the journals.