Prospects of Stable Production Technologies for Food Crops

식량 안정생산기술의 전망

  • Published : 1999.11.01

Abstract

The major problems of food crop cultivation in Korea are low yield of most crops except rice. inefficient cultivation techniques for aged farmers. and low international competibility. Therefore, development of cultivation techniques of food crops should aim the yield. quality improvement, labor reduction and production cost. The primary issue for increasing the yield of soybean, barely and wheat is to reduce the yield gap between the farmer's yield and recommended ones of experiment station. More advanced cultivation techniques needs to be developed. and/or the conventional breeding methods to be reconsidered. The newly developed labor-saving mechanized technique needs to reduce labor hours , and the cost of agricultural implements and machineries. In other words the labor-saving mechanized technique should be developed based on the improvement of total farming system as well as systemic fundamental innovation of cultural methods. The efficiency of solar energy use in food production of Korea in 1997 is as low as $0.52{\%}$ so there is much room to increase yield. It is recommendable that the concept of food Production should be changed to energy Producing efficiency Per unit area basis from volume and weight of food materials. Moreover, introduction of resonable cropping system is needed to increase yield of main crops, farmer's income, solar energy use efficiency, and decrease of land service expenditure. Current cropping system emphasized on economic crops. especially in vegetables , is not desirable for resonable use of arable land. stability of agricultural management and staple food crop self-sufficiency ratio. It is desirable to increase food crops . that are energy of carbohydrate and protein rich and land dependent crops. in cropping system. And the agronomist should develop the cultural methods to replace food crops for food self-sufficiency and stable farming management instead of economic crops in current cropping system. Low-input and environmentally-sound crop cultivation techniques, especially nitrogen-reducing culture technique which is directly related to food crop quality, also needs to be developed urgently. The extended cultivation of corn in upland and barely and wheat in lowland as a feed stuffs is recommended to prevent further decrease of food self-sufficiency ratio, which is mainly caused by the high reliance on imported feed grain. It is also considered that the calculation and presentation methods of standard agricultural income needs to be improved. The current calculation method uses unit land area of 10a regardless of crop kinds , characteristics of agricultural management and cultivation scale. So, it is apt to lead misunderstanding of farm income value. Therefore. it should show an income of average farmers for certain number of years. Research and developing system for food producing is not desirable because they are conducted currently individual crop and mono-culture basis. But actual agricultural income is usually earned by cropping system including upland and lowland. For example. the barley and wheat is usually cultivated in double cropping system. The cooperation among research institutes such as university agribusiness. government and farmers is indispensible. The public information and education on importance and consumption habit of food crops is necessary in Korean society to increase food self-sufficiency through nationwide cooperation.

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