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Amid keen interest in food security in the wake of soaring international grain prices, a study says that South Korea ranks near the bottom among OECD member states in grain self-sufficiency.
In a report released on Sunday, Kim Tae-gon, a fellow researcher at the Korea Rural Economic Institute, said that South Korea ranked 26th among 29 OECD member states with a grain self-sufficiency rate of 25.3 percent as of 2003.
The grain self-sufficiency rate is calculated by dividing the annual domestic production of grain, including feed grains, processed grains and fuel grains, by the domestic consumption of grain. The smaller the rate, the lower the grain self-sufficiency.
Iceland, an island nation near the Arctic Circle, has the lowest rate with zero grain self-sufficiency. South Korea ranked near the bottom alongside 27th-ranking Japan (22.4 percent) and 28th-ranking Netherlands (21.2 percent).
In contrast, 13 countries had rates of more than 100 percent, including France (329 percent), Czech Republic (198.6 percent), and Hungary (153.7 percent), meaning they produce more grain than they consume.
Kim pointed out that China, Japan and South Korea -- which have relatively small amounts of farmland per capita, relatively high national incomes, and large populations -- are competing with each other to import grain from a small number of grain exporters, including the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Argentina.
"It's basically necessary to increase domestic agricultural production to ensure a stable supply of grain. We need to make a multifaceted study about grain production policies to attain our self-sufficiency goal," Kim said.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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