Today's agricultural production is commercialized instead of being self-consumption-oriented. The agricultural environment has been globalized, in particular, under the WTO system. In this circumstances, Korean agricultural situation has been worsened...
Today's agricultural production is commercialized instead of being self-consumption-oriented. The agricultural environment has been globalized, in particular, under the WTO system. In this circumstances, Korean agricultural situation has been worsened due to the openness of agricultural market as well as uncontrollable weather changes and pests. These cause uncertainty and risk in creating stable income achieved by rational management of farming.
The total arable land has been reduced from three million and two hundred sixty four thousand hectors in 1970 to two million and ninety eight hectors in 2000 while the ratio of vegetable cultivating areas has increased from 7.78 percent in 1970 to 14.11 percent in 2000. The per capita annual consumption of vegetable has increased 59.9kg in 1970 to 148kg in 2000. This means that vegetable farming is relatively important in agriculture. However, vegetable farming lies in uncertainty and the degree of uncertainty depends upon decisions about crops and harvests per year. Therefore, income depends upon these decisions.
Under the assumption that all factors causing the reduction of income are risk factors, the purposes of the study are to review the income status, analyzing the ratio of income change by crops, to depict risk factors, analyzing sixteen cases classified by factors resulting in income changes and farmers' perceptions, and to analyze farmers' decisions under the risks.
The results of the study are as follows: First, the analysis showed that income variations have occurred irregularly and income has been decreased as a whole. However, there are some exceptions in house strawberry, autumn cabbage, and field pepper during 1994~1999. The reason was investigated by the increase of management costs due to the increase of oil prices.
The result of CV analysis showed that fruits are the most stable and leaf vegetables are least stable. The CVs are 0.052 as a minimum, 0.769 as a maximum, and 0.225 as average for fruits, for leaf vegetables 0.075, 2.236, and 0.467, respectably, for root vegetables 0.079, 2, and 0.317, respectably, and for seasoning vegetables 0.084, 0.666, and 0.345, respectably.
Applying the formula that Income(W/10a) equals to Production(kg/10a) times Price(W/kg) and minus Management cost(W/10a) to analyzing income variations of primary factor, following results were gained: forty four cases showed income increase and fifty six cases showed income decrease.
Farmers were considering several factors in deciding farming crops such as price, import, weather condition, consumer's preference, in order.