Technological Changes in Agriculture and Information Technology: Centrality and Citation Analyses of South Korean Agricultural Patent Data

Abstract

This study analyses recent changes in the agricultural technology trends at the current pace of its convergence with information technology (IT) using South Korean agricultural patent data from 2000 to 2015. This article focuses on the structural changes in agricultural technology in terms of patent applications by specific technology sector between the two periods: Period 1 (2000–2007) and Period 2 (2008–2015). Accordingly, we performed centrality analysis to measure the importance of each agricultural technology based on International Patent Classification (IPC) sub-classes. We also conducted citation analysis to identify whether the proportion of backward and forward citations of agricultural patents had significantly changed between the two periods. The results of the centrality analysis suggest that, whereas food technology was the most important technology sector in agriculture during both the periods, agricultural production technology experienced a considerable increase in its share in agriculture in Period 2. The results of the citation analysis confirm a substantial degree of interconnectivity between agricultural technology and non-agricultural technologies.