While the Democratic Party of Korea is pushing ahead with the revision of the Grain Management Act, which encourages excessive rice production, the government announced the ‘2023 Proper Rice Production Measures’, which contains a plan to reduce the rice cultivation area by 37,000 hectares this year to stabilize rice supply and demand and raise prices the other day. did. Instead of adjusting the appropriate rice cultivation area from 727,000 hectares last year to 690,000 hectares this year, subsidies are paid when soybeans or powdered rice are grown in paddy fields. If the measures are implemented, the price of rice in the harvest season is expected to rise by regarding 5%, and the cost of rice isolation is expected to be reduced by regarding 440 billion won. It is said that it is possible to increase the cultivation of other crops instead of rice, raising the food self-sufficiency rate, which is only 44.4%.
Production adjustment among crops is unavoidable to solve structural overproduction in the rice market, stabilize rice price during harvest, and food security in case of emergencies. Due to changes in people’s eating habits, per capita annual rice consumption last year was 56.7 kg, less than half of the 112.9 kg in 1992, 30 years ago, while wheat consumption per capita reached 32 kg, well over half of rice consumption. As a result, the domestic rice self-sufficiency rate is close to 100%, but in the case of wheat, it is only 1.1%, and almost all of it is dependent on imports.
In this situation, if the amendment to the Grain Management Act is passed, excess rice production will accelerate and farmers will lose their incentive to grow alternative crops. The Rural Development Administration analyzes that out of 820,000 hectares of paddy fields, even 90,000 hectares, which were cultivated for other crops such as wheat and soybeans, will be converted to rice, and the excess production of rice, which was 240,000 tons last year, will soar to 640,000 tons by 2030. The annual blood tax of 1.4 trillion won required for the mandatory purchase of rice is also a problem, but it goes once morest economic efficiency, agricultural policy innovation, and securing food sovereignty.
Regarding the controversial amendment to the Grain Management Act, an amendment that reflects the arbitration proposal of National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo is directly referred to the plenary session of the National Assembly. Compared to the original plan, the arbitration plan gave the government some discretionary power over the standards for obligatory rice purchase, but the toxic clause of ‘government obligatory purchase’ is still alive. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party misrepresents the measure as a measure to stabilize rice prices and is poised to pass the bill alone within this month. At a time when the political world is not enough even if bipartisan cooperation is lacking, it is deplorable that the huge opposition party rushes through populist bills that harm the national economy while catering only to Nongshim.
