Covering the food & beverage industry, beauty, fashion, retail markets, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and related people and entities worldwide
Korea to establish 4 new overseas offices to help spur exports of smart farm technology
Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Song Mi-ryung, left, tours a strawberry smart farm in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province, Thursday, where pestilence caused by insects or other diseases can be mitigated. Courtesy of Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs
By Ko Dong-hwan
The Korean government will establish four new offices in countries in the Middle East, the Commonwealth of Independent States and Oceania this year to support the exportation of smart farm technology, a sector that holds high growth potential, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Monday.
The government, together with the state-funded Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), said that it will introduce four new offices across the regions as smart farms continue to gain popularity worldwide. In addition to the existing office in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh, the new offices will support the expansion of Korea's smart farm technology developers into various markets in the respective regions.
The new offices will be in Kuwait City, Kuwait, Almaty, Kazakhstan, Baku, Azerbaijan and Melbourne, Australia. The office in Riyadh, which opened last September, will go through an expansion this year. The locations, according to the ministry, have been determined based on statistics from last year's exports, the demand for local smart farm support centers and project orders that Korean smart farm companies received from overseas.
The offices act as the country's technical bridge between Korean smart farm companies interested in selling their technology overseas and foreign cities' needs concerning farming systems driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and complete automation. These offices will help Korean firms consult with local law firms in these cities to check whether their technological exports are legal, safe and feasible.
The offices will also venture to discover the local demand for new smart farm projects, carry out local market surveys and resolve problems encountered by Korean smart farm companies in these cities.
To promote smart farming and discover new export paths, the ministry, together with KOTRA and the new offices, will also host a K-Smart Farm Roadshow in these respective countries this year.
"The new offices will be a tremendous help for the country's smart farm companies that are interested in market expansion overseas but lack related experiences and resources outside the country," an Agricultural Innovation Policy Office official under the ministry said. "The government will keep introducing new measures to provide various types of support for our smart farm companies to increase their presence among other countries."
The country's smart farm exports and secured project orders last year reached $296 million, more than double the previous year.
Smart farming is increasingly becoming a solution to the country's agricultural sector, which is suffering from a depleted workforce and climate crisis-related weather conditions that are increasingly becoming less predictable. Controlled by sensor-triggered AI and big data storage, the system operates farms by automatically responding to the ambient environment. Such automation increases productivity and reduces the amount of working hours.
On Thursday, Agriculture Minister Song Mi-ryung visited a strawberry smart farm in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province, which uses a solution that predicts the chances of possible diseases caused by insects based on conditions inside the farm. Farmers at the site met the minister and said that this technological approach allowed them to better prepare for various situations and save money on pesticides.