Sejong Special Self-Governing City held a meeting to collect opinions from relevant parties at the Agricultural Technology Center’s banquet room on the 2nd regarding the rice cultivation area adjustment system that will be implemented starting in 2025. This meeting was held to successfully implement the rice cultivation area adjustment system, which aims to resolve the rice oversupply problem, stabilize rice prices, and increase farm household income.
With the participation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Sejong City, and township officials, the policy background and implementation plan for the rice cultivation area adjustment system were shared, and difficulties experienced in the field were discussed. Sejong City must achieve the goal of reducing rice cultivation area by 373 hectares by 2025, which requires local farmers to make a mandatory reduction of approximately 12% from 2024.
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[Korean Today] Sejong City Holds Opinion Collection Meeting for Implementation of Rice Cultivation Area Adjustment System © Reporter Lee Yoon-joo |
The rice cultivation area adjustment system is a policy introduced to solve the problem of structural oversupply of rice, thereby stabilizing rice prices and increasing farmers’ income. The goal is to reduce rice cultivation area by 80,000 hectares nationwide, and Sejong City plans to support the achievement of the goal by encouraging the cultivation of strategic crops such as rice fields, soybeans, and summer forage, or by cultivating landscape crops and converting fallow land.
At the meeting, officials expressed various difficulties. Major challenges pointed out included the problem of low policy understanding due to the aging rural population, difficult farmland conditions for converting to other crops, and incentives that lack the effect felt by farmers. In response, Sejong City announced various support measures to encourage farmers to participate.
Farmers who implement the reduction in rice cultivation area will be provided with incentives such as preferential allocation of public reserve rice, additional support for public direct payments, and additional points for evaluation of agricultural machinery support policies. In addition, the strategic crop direct payment unit price has been adjusted upward, and the subsidy has been set at 5 million won per hectare for summer forage, 2 million won for paddy soybeans, and 1 million won for edible corn. In addition, Sejong City plans to invest in fertilization to provide additional incentives in addition to government support.
On the other hand, strong sanctions will be applied to farms that fail to reduce their rice cultivation area, such as excluding them from public rice reserve allocation.
Yang Wan-sik, the director of the Sejong City Urban-Rural Mutual Growth Bureau, emphasized, “Stabilizing rice prices is a key task for farm income,” and “We need cooperation from farms to solve the problem of oversupply that repeats every year.” Choi Myeong-cheol, the director of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs’ Food Policy Bureau, also asked for active participation from local governments and farms, saying, “Reducing the area of rice cultivation is inevitable to stabilize rice prices and increase farm income.”
With this meeting as an opportunity, Sejong City plans to establish more specific and practical measures to encourage cooperation from farmers and make continuous efforts with the goal of stabilizing the rice industry.
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