Conventional, partially converted and environmentally friendly farming in South Korea

Profitability and factors affecting farmers' choice

authored by: Saem Lee, Trung Thanh Nguyen, Patrick Poppenborg, Hio Jung Shin, Thomas Koellner
Abstract: While organic farming is well established in Europe a nd USA, it is still catching up in Asian countries. The government of South Korea has implemented environmentally friendly farming that encompasses organic farming. Despite the promotion of environmentally friendly farming, it still has a low share in South Korea and partially converted farming has emerged in some districts of South Korea. However, the partially converted farming has not yet been investigated by the government. Thus, our study implemented a financial analysis to compare the annual costs and net returns of conventional, partially converted and environmentally friendly farming in Gangwon Province. The result showed that environmentally friendly farming was more profitable with respect to farm net returns. To find out the factors affecting the adoption of environmentally friendly farming, multinomial logistic regression was implemented. The findings revealed that education and subsidy positively and significantly influenced the probability of farmers' choice on partially converted and environmentally friendly farming. Farm size had a negative and significant relationship with only environmentally friendly farming. This study will contribute to future policy establishment for sustainable agriculture as recommended by improving the quality of fertilizers, suggesting the additional investigation associated with partially converted farmers.
Organisation(s): Institute of Environmental Economics and World Trade
Institute of Geobotany
External Organisation(s): University of Bayreuth
Kangwon National University
Type: Article
Journal: Sustainability (Switzerland)
Volume: 8
ISSN: 2071-1050
Publication date: 25.07.2016
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Geography, Planning and Development, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Environmental Science (miscellaneous), Energy Engineering and Power Technology, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.3390/su8080704 (Access: Open)