Abstrat: Multifunctionality of Agriculture and Multifunctional Agriculture

A Valuation Study on Multifunctionality of Agriculture and Multifunctional Agriculture in South Korea:

Beyond 6th Industrialization

 

Abstract

Due to the global warming, environmental pollution and global competition in agricultural sector, the multifunctionality of agriculture (MOA) is attracting worldwide attention, and environment-preserving agriculture and sustainable agricultural development are becoming major policy issues around the world.

Korea concluded FTA with several countries after the financial crisis in 1998. As a result, the domestic industrial economy has been revitalized, but international competition for agricultural products is intensifying, the gap between agriculture and industry is widening, and the increase in the extinction of villages is causing a decrease in the agricultural food self-sufficiency rate. The Korean government has been promoting local food consumption promotion, the 6th industrialization, and a quality certification system since 2000 to solve these problems in agriculture. Since the Park’s administration (2013~2017), 6th industrialization has been enacted and promoted until now, but 6th industrialization is biased toward economic and income aspects of agricultural production, processing, and distribution and there is a limit to the efforts to grow the Multifunctionality of agriculture of nature and environment, history and culture, landscape and community recovery in agriculture.

This study is an economic valuation research on multifunctionality of agriculture (MOA) in rural villages and multifunctional agriculture (MFA), for proposing practical ways of comprehensive rural development utilizing Multifunctionality of agriculture in rural villages that can balance economic income with other Multifunctionality of agriculture. The application of economic value evaluation is to suggest the importance of each attribute and a method for agricultural economic activities beyond agricultural production such as MFA and try to clarify the usefulness and direction of implementation of MFA

Specifically, Chapter 1 describes the background and research tasks of this study. In Chapter 2, theoretical considerations were presented on the expected effects in connection with the function and effects of the theory MFA on the nature of public goods or environmental goods. Chapter 3 compares and analyses the EU's multifunctional agriculture and Korea's 6th industrialization policy through policy content and case introduction. It was clear that the 6th industrialization policy in Korea oriented toward economic income-led.  Meanwhile, agricultural producers had a weak awareness of Multifunctionality of agriculture, thus the tendency to protect the environment and carry on the tradition was weak. Chapter 4 summarizes the methodological theory of valuation methods for environmental goods such as Multifunctionality of agriculture. As a result of comparing several evaluation methods, such as contingent valuation method (CVM) and choice experiment (CE), the CE method was judged to be an appropriate method for the economic value evaluation of this study.

Following the preliminary study above, Chapters 5 and 6 are the part of the empirical study of economic valuation. In Chapter 5, the CE technique was applied to evaluate the Multifunctionality of agriculture. For analysis, Multifunctionality of agriculture functions of agriculture were classified, and representative functions were extracted. In order to apply the stratified sampling technique, a survey was conducted in which a hypothetical representative Multifunctionality of agriculture was presented and answered for general citizens at Seoul Station and Seoul Bus Terminal, where people from all over the country gather. As an analysis method for the survey result, conditional logit and latent class logit (LCL) models were applied and estimated. As a result, the value was estimated in the order of nature and environment, history and culture, public activity, and landscape. As a result of the analysis of LCL and conditional logit, it was found that there was heterogeneity in the model.

In Chapter 6, it was found that there is a value for Multifunctionality of agriculture, and the value of MFA that can be utilized was estimated. This can show under what conditions meaningful economic activity is possible when promoting MFA. The conditions for promoting MFA were extracted from a total of 11 attributes and 60 types according to van der Ploeg's theory. A survey was conducted same as chapter 5 at Seoul Station and Seoul Bus Terminal by asking which combination is more attractive to the general citizen when visiting rural areas. Conditional logit analysis and probit model were applied as analysis methods for the survey results. As a result, there was no absolute difference in the coefficient values, and the significance and value of each attribute were also the same. The reason for performing these two analyses is to solve the heterogeneity problem that occurs in the conditional logit analysis and to verify the model’s appropriateness. According to the analysis results, implications were interpreted that rural visitors were highly interested in the nature and environmentally friendly areas and the attributes of rural landscapes that can be directly experienced when visiting MFA rural areas. About the facilities, it was found out that they would prefer wood to other materials and to stay at a hotel in the vicinity than to do something to be able to experience the countryside, and to stay on a farm stay or camping.

Based on the above analysis, Chapter 7 made the following conclusions and policy recommendations. South Korea's sixth industrialization policy has a strong economic orientation of increasing income and has the characteristic of neglecting Multifunctionality of agriculture such as environmental protection. In order to simultaneously increase the income of agricultural farmers and utilize the Multifunctionality of agriculture, it is necessary to promote the EU’s MFA or environmentally friendly 6th industrialization to South Korea. There are these kinds of demand among the public. It is strongly desired that the Korean government expand the vector and contents of the measures toward the Multifunctionality of agriculture such as environmental protection, utilizing the best use of the existing sixth industrialization promoting system.