With the improving of national income and the growing of consumers demands for safe agricultural products, more and more farmhouses are practicing environment-friendly agriculture and thus the cultivation area for agricultural products to that end is ...
With the improving of national income and the growing of consumers demands for safe agricultural products, more and more farmhouses are practicing environment-friendly agriculture and thus the cultivation area for agricultural products to that end is increasingly growing. In particular, the incumbent Korean government (so called the government of people) is implementing agricultural policies whereby it indicates, positively fosters and supports environment-friendly agriculture that will bolster the international competitiveness of agricultural products and keep the Korean agriculture going thus responding to new tastes of consumers. Although demands and concern are growing about environment-friendly agricultural products backed by such policies of the government, we have yet to secure consumers confidence in order to gain momentum to popularize the consumption of environment-friendly agricultural products. To activate their consumption, we must structure confidence of consumers, popularize them, and put it in place at an early time. In this sense, securing of consumers confidence and early implementation of product certification system differentiating environment-friendly products from general agricultural products are crucial in spurring their consumption as environment-friendly agricultural products are becoming popular. If we produce and supply quality certification-earned environment-friendly agricultural products in large quantity, this will win consumers confidence and help trigger their consumption. To do this, we have conducted questionnaire-based surveys targeting farmhouses practicing environment-friendly agriculture and consumers, and come up with the following results.
Analysis on producers reply to questionnaires
The more producers have experience in farming and education in environment-friendly agricultural products, the more they have probability in growing environment-friendly agricultural products, and in particular, the more producers have experience in farming quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products and the more they have chances of education on environment-friendly agricultural products, the more they have probability of increasing their income. In addition, the more producers have academic education, and the more they have experience in farming, the more they are likely to be satisfied with product certification items of environment-friendly agricultural products. This means that environment-friendly agriculture is not yet put in place. 61.8% of the respondents say that the production cost of quality certification environment-friendly agricultural products is higher than that of general agricultural products. The problem here is that farmers with less experience and lower levels of academic education incur more cost. This means that environment-friendly agriculture production techniques are not yet established, In particular, they are generally satisfied with the levels of selling prices, but a number of respondents indicate that too high prices are not desirable in order to expand the consumption of environment-friendly agricultural products. Environment-friendly agricultural products are being sold in diverse ways, but farmers must explore large consumption bases. Notably, producers cite as big problems in distribution lacks of recognition of consumers and inability to secure justifiable prices. Yet, ordinary farmhouses that use fewer amounts of agricultural chemicals and comprise most of environment-friendly agriculture practicing farmhouses are having difficulty finding consumers of their products.
Analysis on questionnaire-based surveys on quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products with consumers
The higher consumers are in income, academic education and age, the more they are not necessarily likely to buy quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products with statistical significance. However, the higher they put confidence in quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products, the more they are likely to buy them. Together with this, the higher consumers are in their confidence in quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products, age and education, the more they are likely to consume them.
This indicates that prospects for quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products to be popularized are very bright. The surveys further show that consumers have relatively high recognition for quality certified environment-friendly agricultural products and 65% of purchasers of quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products are satisfied with them, brightening the prospects for their popularization. Explanatory variables such as consumers residential areas, income, and academic education have correlation with recognition on and purchase of quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products. Consumers regard the freshness of agricultural products the most highly when they buy them, and they take caution against their effective period, whether they carry remnants of agricultural chemicals, and warning phrases. This pattern of consumption is related to consumers experience in buying quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products.
Based on the results of these surveys, we propose alternatives to enhancing consumers confidence and spurring their consumption of quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products as they are being popularized.
First, we need urgently organize farmers concerned and create production compounds.
We must organize farmers involved, create large-scale production compounds, and unify the education and standards aimed at spreading technologies and quality management and new technologies, and thus we can intensify their brands as local environment-friendly agricultural products. At the same time, when the production compounds become large to a certain extent, it will be easy to establish joint operation systems such as in collection at the central production compound, selection, packaging and transport facilities.
Second, we must first establish environment-friendly agriculture-related technology systems.
To spread environment-friendly agriculture, we must gather and reshape technologies dispersed among private sectors, allow such environment-friendly agriculture technologies to be shared by relevant production bodies, producers engaged in environment-friendly agriculture and general agricultural products farmers, thus making environment-friendly agriculture more accessible.
Third, we must diversify environment-friendly agricultural products.
To promote their consumption, we must increase the items of environment-friendly agricultural products (currently limited to certain items) and improve the current operation structure aimed to enable distributors to have diverse assortments of lower-invested agricultural products and respond to needs of consumers.
Fourth, general agricultural products producers and consumers must change their mindset on environment-friendly agricultural products.
To actualize the production augmentation of environment-friendly agricultural products, general agricultural products producers and consumers must develop a good recognition on environment-friendly agricultural products. Current strategies for the production and sales of environment-friendly agricultural products are focused only on safety, but are lacking in enhancing the public-benefiting function of environment-friendly agriculture such as environment protection and the restoration of local ecosystems. We must strengthen the publicity of the environment protection effect that the production of environment-friendly agricultural products can bring.
Fifth, the government must provide systematic support to help private certification systems be put in place at an early time.
Quality certification works should be mature to a certain extent backed by the support of the government, before we transfer them to the private sector from the government. The government must present basic certification criteria and methods, and domestic private certification institutions provide diverse forms of detailed certification criteria.
For the consumption phase,
First, we must strengthen the education and publicity of quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products against consumers. We need enhance consumers confidence in environment-friendly agricultural products by publicizing their safety and environment friendliness, and consequential differentiation and superiority.
Second, we must explore large demand bases for environment-friendly agricultural products.
To augment the consumption of quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products, we need positively develop large consumption bases such as customers in groups, in addition to their existing disthbution methods.
Third, we must positively push e-business for environment-friendly agricultural products.
To expand the consumption of quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products, we need push their e-business. With the government positively leading the way in promoting the mindset on the Internet, Internet users will increasingly grow and information flow will be accelerated. Given such an environment, e-business of environment-friendly agricultural products will likely increase. As one category of main consumers of environment-friendly agricultural products is young homemakers who are familiar to the Internet, prospects for the e-business of environment-friendly agricultural products are promising.
Fourth, consumers need to change their awareness on the certification of environment-friendly agricultural products.
To develop demands for quality-certified environment-friendly agricultural products, it is important to implement quality certification labeling systems that prove that these agricultural products have been grown to protect the environment. Certification marks or certification labels do not only simply tell environment-friendly agricultural products are grown with no or little agricultural chemicals, but also should highlight the fact that their farmers have made exerted their efforts to protect the environment and restore local ecosystems. Thus, consumers should be made to be aware of such efforts and buy them, thereby enabling farmers to continue their production.
Fifth, we need continue to publicize certification marks and improve their design.
To enhance confidence in environment-friendly agricultural products, we need continue to publicize quality certification marks. To enhance consumers awareness to environment-friendly agricultural products, we must use diverse media and steadily publicize them for more than two years. We also need design certification marks for environment friendly agricultural products to be easily recognizable and memorable by consumers, to differentiate them from general agricultural products and develop them.
Sixth, we must support and foster processing businesses using environment-friendly agricultural products as raw materials.
We need encourage businesses to use environment-friendly agricultural products as raw materials for processing food, and support and foster them. These efforts will greatly help the production base of environment-friendly agricultural products stabilize. Thus, the government need gradually expand policy support such as processing facilities, taxation advantage, processing technologies, packaging materials manufacture and so on.
Seventh, we must deploy environment-friendly agricultural products distribution systems aimed at establishing environment-conservation type local agricultural systems.
We need reshuffle the current agricultural production structure in order to develop environment-friendly agriculture. We likewise must systematically organize organic agriculture-based production sites within the local capabilities, encourage farmers to individually or collectively introduce cultivation, livestock, forestation and processing sectors, and thus establish local complex circulation-type agriculture with all these well combined, i.e., environment-conservation local agriculture systems.