Wither Korean agriculture - smart and ecological, or poorly industrializing?

By Bernhard J. Seliger

Wherever strategies for economic growth are discussed, soon the example of South Korea´s stellar growth from the 1960s to the 1990s, and ― in a more mature way from then on ― will be mentioned.

Largely, it was a combination of first selective, later wholesale liberalization of trade, export incentives, and internally growth-oriented policies, among them foremost thorough infrastructure development. And the economy started to grow, grow, grow …

However, like all good things, there can be too much of a good thing. Economists call this the theory of decreasing (and sometimes even declining returns): The more we invest in a particular project, let us say roads, the lower the returns will be. And, ultimately, they might be negative.

The first motorways built in Korea allowed for huge efficiency gains, but by and by they got smaller. Clearly, there are innovations altering the calculation: When KTX technology became available, investment in railways, a basically very old technology, suddenly became more attractive again and now the KTX on many routes is competitive with airflights. But generally, more infrastructure does not always translate into more growth; on the contrary.

Rice fields, like here near Paju, northwest of Seoul, are important areas for biodiversity in Korea, changing an additional 10 percent of land cover every year into wetlands. /Courtesy of Bernhard J. Seliger

For Korea's agriculture and environment, this problem is of particular importance. With the broad debate about the finalization of the huge Saemangeum reclamation project in the early 2000s, where the argument for finishing the project was not additional economic gain, but rather that already so much money ― several billion U.S. dollars ― had been invested, it was clear that such kind of large-scale infrastructure project heavily damaging the environment would not be able to continue.

And indeed, 20 years later reclamation not only completely stopped, but the first small-scale renaturation projects started, re-wetting former wetlands and tidal flats.

But, on a much smaller scale, industrialization of agriculture still goes on. Korea's traditional rice farming is a boon for the environment: Every year around 10 percent of the country (the rice fields) turn into additional wetlands, which are a great habitat for species of birds (like egrets, ducks or waders), amphibia (like frogs and toads), reptiles (like snakes), insects etc.

Industrialization of the landscape, like in the huge Saemangeum project, reduces biodiversity, but also other functions of landscape ― and its attractiveness for tourists and locals alike. /Courtesy of Bernhard J. Seliger

Intensive rice farming with the use of many artificial inputs like fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides already reduced this bio-diversity. However, the real danger is from unabated improvements in infrastructure, in particular the change from natural trenches into concrete pipes and deep concrete trenches which become death traps for small animals.

Broader roads in the fields, pipes instead of actual trenches, hot houses and ginseng fields covered by plastic help farmers to farm their fields and improve their profits. For an agriculture plagued by low productivity as traditional, small-scale farming, this is important.

But there are important costs in the loss of biodiversity, the loss of balancing functions of landscapes like water household balancing and control of the loss of soil by wind and rain, and the last but not least the loss of a livable and beautiful landscape attractive for tourism and local inhabitants at the same time.

These changes are most pronounced where previously development was not possible, like in the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) near the inner-Korean border. When the CCZ was reduced in places like Cheorwon some years ago, there was a massive industrialization of agriculture, pensions were erected everywhere, and habitats important for the feeding of cranes, the symbol birds of Korea, disappeared.

Predictably, more and more rare species like cranes are concentrated in a few areas (especially in the remaining CCZ and the DMZ proper), a situation highly undesirable for a number of reasons like disease control.

Many birds, like this wood sandpiper, depend on rice fields as habitats to forage in, breed or winter. /Courtesy of Bernhard J. Seliger

The situation in Korea is by no way unique. Europe for a long time experienced a similar industrialization of agriculture. In places like East Germany, where the socialist state ran huge cooperative farms, in northern France, in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands landscapes became literally empty.

While forests were generally fostered and forest species in Europe thrived well, there has been a disturbing trend of massive losses of species in agricultural areas. Many ground-breeding birds like the northern lapwing, once a very common bird in Europe, or the partridge, a favorite game bird, saw losses of much more than half their population, sometimes 80-90 percent.

One answer to this was the renaturation of landscapes: rivers and streams which had been streamlined or even put into concrete hulls, were freed again and artificially brought to meander again.

Fields were divided by hedgerows, important bio-corridors, and wildflower strips alongside fields became mandatory in some places, as well as mandatory fallow land regulations, where farmers had to retire a percentage of their land in a rotating way to allow it to regenerate.

Particularly successful were policies of contractual environment protection. Farmers were "hired" by the state to perform environmental tasks. After all, the preservation of bio-diversity and landscape diversity is not a duty for farmers alone, but a requirement from the society.

So, the society started to pay for it. In Germany, along the former inner-German border, a lot of dry meadows existed, which in the times of division allowed East German soldiers to scan the surroundings for potential defectors.

But, involuntarily, these fields became important for species of insects, butterflies, reptiles, and breeding birds like quails. After unification, these low-yield meadows were transformed into either forest or farmers thought of tilling the land.

However, the state governments on both sides of the border began to pay farmers for continuing to maintain dry meadows there, together with rather unprofitable sheep herding to prevent natural afforestation. Clearly, those schemes are not free, but have to be financed by the taxpayer.

But they allow a more harmonious development of agricultural development, with the preservation of local traditions, for example by promoting local breeds of animals or local fruit tree species etc.

In Korea, in the last years some attempts have been made for similar schemes, for example by paying farmers for "munon", rice fields permanently under water, which are very important for certain bird species in the spring time.

But, given the high, often speculative land value in Korea, many land owners flatly reject any kind of state intervention. But the future of South Korea's agriculture, a new understanding of the importance of finding a balance between economic development and ecological preservation is of utmost importance.

This does not mean a reject of agricultural innovation: on the contrary, "smart" agriculture, allowing for more targeted fertilization, and smarter organization, like in contractual environment protection, allow for a better balance of both goals.

The German Embassy, with Hanns-Seidel-Foundation of Germany and partners like Birds Korea, will bring together leading German and Korean experts on "smart" agriculture and biodiversity for a half-day conference on discussing these challenges in Seoul on Nov. 17.

On Nov. 17, a conference in Seoul will discuss the issues of modern, smart agriculture and biodiversity.

More information about this can be found at: https://korea.hss.de/en/news/detail/koreanisch-deutsche-konferenz-am-17-november-news9350/

Dr. Bernhard J. Seliger is the resident representative of the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) in Korea, based in Seoul. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, he frequently traveled to North Korea, where he implemented projects on forestry, environment and renewable energy as well as medical cooperation. He is an honorary citizen of Seoul and Gangwon Province.