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| An official of the Korea Program for International Cooperation in Agricultural Technology (KOPIA) and a farmer plant seed potatoes in Ecuador. Courtesy of RDA |
By Baek Byung-yeul
The government has been implementing various diplomatic policies to improve its international influence in line with the size of its economy, which has grown to the rank of 10th in the world in the 2020 GDP rankings.
In line with the government's efforts, the Rural Development Administration (RDA) has produced fruitful results, as the state-run agency that conducts research activities for agriculture has passed on its agricultural technology to other countries.
"We have made Korea's agricultural technology benefit the public interest by sharing the experiences and knowledge ― accumulated through 50 years of investments in the agriculture sector here ― with countries that need agricultural technological development," an RDA official said, Wednesday.
The RDA has implemented a two-track strategy when carrying out its overseas agricultural technology transfer projects. One is to support each country in developing agricultural technology through the Korea Program for International Cooperation in Agricultural Technology (KOPIA), and the other is to provide continent-level support through the "3-FACI," or Food and Agriculture Cooperation Initiatives on three continents, including Asia, Africa and South America.
Through these efforts, the RDA said that it was able to provide practical help to various countries by utilizing the country's advanced agricultural technology.
"We helped improve agricultural productivity, including that of corn in Cambodia, rice in Paraguay and oranges in Uganda. We were also able to strengthen strategic partnerships with countries such as Malaysia and international organizations such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank and the CGIAR," the official said.
He added that the RDA's such efforts could raise awareness about the fact that Korean agricultural technology is considered an excellent case of success in the international community, something that was also reported in the U.N. and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Giving examples of successful technology transfer by the RDA, the agency introduced the case of Cambodia, saying that KOPIA helped the Southeast Asian country develop its own variety of corn.
In cooperation with KOPIA's support program, Cambodia was able to learn methods of variety selection and novel plant-breeding technologies developed in Korea. As the results, in February 2020, KOPIA developed a new variety of corn that is highly productive, resistant to diseases and suitable for both dry and rainy climates.
In order to strengthen the capabilities of Cambodian researchers, Korean corn experts have been dispatched this year to guide related technologies to researchers and farmers there. KOPIA's future goal is to expand the cultivation area of new corn varieties to more than 600 hectares by 2023, and then to more than 50 percent of Cambodia's total cultivation area, the RDA said.
In Ecuador, KOPIA set up a disease-free seed potato production and distribution system and dispatched experts to educate local farmers about pest control technology and post-harvest management technology.
Though potato production accounted for 4.23 percent of Ecuador's total agricultural GDP as of 2019, the penetration rate of disease-free seed potatoes was only at 8 percent, so productivity was 13.3 tons per hectare, lower than the world average of 20 tons.
However, 276 farms participating in the pilot project were able to improve their potato productivity significantly, by 40 percent, from 14.04 tons per hectare in 2018, to 19.7 tons per hectare in 2020. Thanks to these efforts, KOPIA received the Global Compact Award from the United Nations in 2020 for its contribution to eradicating poverty in the country.
Korea's agricultural technology is also spreading in Asia. The RDA and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization have been jointly mapping Asia's soil organic carbon sequestration through cooperation with the Asian Food & Agriculture Cooperation Initiative.
The map shows the carbon potential of soil by region. Experts have said that increasing the organic carbon reserves of soil can alleviate climate change, and that therefore, a map must first be produced to measure the carbon storage capacity of soil in different areas.
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