Analysis of Influential Factors on Sustainable Agricultural Development

Abstract

In this study, the factors anticipated to affect sustainability of Korean agriculture are identified and selected, then importance and performance of each one are analyzed. To this end, the OECD policy analysis framework is employed to serve as a theoretical and conceptual foundation in that it contains a lot of relevant factors and/or sectors not only within agricultural sector but others interacting with the sector. Following the framework, the sustainability-related factors are allocated into economic, societal, and environmental dimensions, and again belonged to more detailed groups. Importance-Performance Analysis is then conducted to quantitatively determine which factors are of higher priority and which problems are to be tackled imperatively. A comprehensive sustainability level of Korean agri- culture assessed by the Sustainability Composite Index (SCI) was 56.1 points (out of 100 points) indicating that there is still room for improvement in various sectors. Especially, the achievement level of social and environmental sustainability was low in the agricultural policy sector. It also shows that agricultural production and food safety, policy implementation capacities, and aging rural population have priority to be improved among the detailed indicators.