Korean Job Discussion Forums

[kiwiduncan]

According to the Korea Herald Korean farmland has declined 0.8% per annum for last decade. Industrial development and housing has gobbled up a lot of the land, and as Korea is increasingly importing food from around the world there has been less pressure to preserve farmland here.

Most countries are in the same boat aren't they? I know for certain that New Zealand is losing a lot of prime agricultural land to housing subdivisions and shopping malls, and America's strip developments are infamous.

I remember hearing a Korean expert on the radio lamenting the FTA deal with the US. He said it will make Korean farmland even less valuable and more vulnerable to being used for non-agricultural purposes at a time when Korea faces increasing food security concerns.

[the eye]

I don't know if you were aware, but hydroponic agriculture is becoming more prevalent here. Greenhouses that cycle out produce fed with chemical nutrients seem to be Korea's answer to eroding farmland.

I don't know what the point of your post is, though. As you said, this types of thing is happening in every country with a large population density.

[kiwiduncan]

[Bryan]

If Korea is using farmland for more productive and valuable applications, that is a good thing.

It's not a bad thing. It's like complaining "The US is losing its textile jobs. Before 25% of the population was involved in sewing, and now only 0.1% is."

The market changes are a good thing if there are no government regulations in the way. As you can see, the US switched to a more service orientated economy, and China picked up the slack with the textile jobs. Each country did each type of job more efficiently, to the benefit of all the people involved. That is how capitalism and the division of labour work.

However, if you don't believe in capitalism and the division of labour, and believe the primitive marxist or nationalist notion that a country must domestically create everything it demands (even to the detriment of the people within the country because certain areas outside a country can do things more efficiently), then all of this is bad. But what I would recommend is updating your understanding of economics from a faulty Marxist or nationalist perspective to one that recognizes the value of the division of labour.

[kiwiduncan]

Modern agriculture is heavily dependent on oil. Fueling machinery - oil. Fertilizer - oil. Transportation of produce - oil. As prices for oil keep on going up so will the costs of producing food, and the transportation of that food around the world. Any country unable to feed itself with its own resources is asking for trouble. You can't eat cellphones.

[blackjack]

The thing is Korea cannot feed it self. There is nothing wrong with this. They have a population in excess of 50,000,000 people in an area 1/4 of NZ/Japan/england. They import food. so? they export cars and electronics. very few countries are self sufficient now adays, it is simply a fact of life

[kiwiduncan]

Oh yes, I fully understand that, and accept that even if they tried to protect all their remaining farmland or even expand it, they would still be dependent on outside food exports. Very few countries in the world are lucky to be in New Zealand's position of being a food independent country.

I just think there is nothing wrong with countries trying to be as self-sufficient as they can be with the basics that everyone takes for granted these days.

[matthews_world]

Koreans won't need that much farm land because of the Korea-US FTA and others. Farmers here won't be able to make enough to provide for their families. The Roh administration even proposed that businesses need to hire more ex-farmers as the trade balance shifts in agriculture due to FTAs. More golf courses have been slated as a use for vacant farmland.

[Bryan]

[cdninkorea]

I agree with Bryan- every country should specialize in whatever they're best at doing, and the decision of what to specialize in should be left to the individual/producer/firm/whatever.

Just as I could, for example, make my own clothes, but instead teach and use that to earn a medium of exchange (money) to buy them at a store, so should Korea make, for example, cars and electronics and trade those for foreign currency to buy food (unless of course farmers don't want to sell their land, which should be their right).

I just finished reading a very illuminating book about the importance and virtues of free trade: click here to check it out.

[Captain Corea]

Korea has a food surplus and continues to export rice (heck, they even give it away).

Sk can still feed itself and more.

They DO need some type of landredistribution though. F8ck those farms are spotty (as in one owner will have his scattered all over the place).

[kiwiduncan]

[Hollywoodaction]

[kiwiduncan]

Bryan. Thanks for your opinions. I guess what it all boils down to is our philosophies and political leanings. I'm guessing we're not going to agree on much here, but it's always good to hear other peoples' points of views. Before you go calling me a sandal wearing tree hugger however please note that I've taken to wearing slippers recently.

My criticism of the current global economic system comes from an environmental and long-term sustainability angle, rather than from any desire to overthrow the oppressors and have some kind of proleteriat utopia.

I certainly don't consider myself a Marxist. I'm a firm believer in private property rights and I actually see capitalism and communism as two sides of the same coin. In both systems you have a ruling elite pressing the commoners to work work work in order to generate greater wealth, much of which is then taken by those at the top. Whether fostered by private commerical interests in capitalist society, or by political ideology in communist states, everywhere the focus was on growth and development, generally at the expense of the natural world. People slag off the capitalist west today, but the communist rulers of the USSR and China also turned/turn a blind eye to serious environmental abuse.

I simply think we live in a world where everyone is far too materialistic. It's also a world where we have more people alive on Earth today than the entire number of all of our dead ancestors going back thousands of years, and where we are gobbling up the world's resources at an unsustainable rate. The modern economic system is essentially fed on oil, oil that has slowly built up over millions of years but has, according to many, been nearly half used up in a few generations. We hit the $US100 a barrel mark recently, and even if you make adjustments for inflation I understand that last week it was the most expensive it's ever been. Others say oil's price is higher because the dollar is so weak, speculators have forced the prices up or conflicts in Nigeria, storms in the Gulf of Mexico etc, have reduced supply. But no-one can deny the basic fact that oil is a finite resource, and with most predictions of economic growth in the future being dependent on the availability of cheap energy, the increasing cost of oil is a serious concern.

Without some decent substitute for oil our global economy and way of life is going to be buggered. Biofuels are not the answer. The hydrogen economy remains Arnold Swarzenegger's wet dream (and besides, as any smug Peaknik like me will tell you, hydrogen is not so much energy as an energy carrier). In fact, I'm one of those rare tree huggers who actually thinks nuclear may be the best option.

Without some major energy breakthough, producing then exporting food around the world is only going to get more expensive. If you want to see what South Korea might be like without oil just look north. The North Koreans are only avoiding starvation these days because of electricity, oil, oil-based fertiliser and other essentials sent by South Korea and others.

Ironically, the North Korean's did have a "Juche" (self-sufficiency) policy. But it failed because they were never truly self-sufficient. The USSR used to provide NK with most of its oil requirements and, during the 1950s and 1960s when NK was in fact much richer than SK, they experienced considerable population growth. They subsequently found though, at the cost of about 2 million lives, that they too can't support themselves without oil.

I believe that we will be facing a global-scale repeat of NK's experience within a few decades. I am yet to be convinced that we can find some magical techno-fix to replace our addiction to oil. The only practical solution I can think of is for us in the so called 'developed' world to make dramatic changes to our materialistic and resource-greedy lifestyles. If the whole world was to live at the level of affluence that the West currently enjoys we would 7 Earths worth of resources. We don't have that, and NASA's forays into space have so far been been pretty unimpressive, so I think we should use what we have much more fairly and conservatively.

Hence, understandably, I reject this idea of constant economic growth, given that we live on a planet with finite resources. In the modern world we accept ideas like 'our economy must grow 4.3% in the next quarter', but this way seeing the world was completely alien up until about 200 years ago. For most of human history humans have stuck with the basics of keeping safe, warm and well-fed. The abundance of easy energy in the form of oil has allowed recent generations to take these essentials for granted, but I see an end to these easy times within our lifetimes.

So, let's bring this discussion back to Korean agriculture again. What will the Koreans do when the global economy has gone to shit, no-one can afford to buy their 32" flatscreen TVs and mobile phones, China, one of their major foreign sources of food supply has polluted and exhausted its own farmlands and is struggling to feed its own people, and most Korean rice paddies have been turned into golf courses and Free Economic Zones?

[quercus]

wow.

why nuclear?

i know plenty of people who happily exist off the grid by moderately moderating their energy intake with wind and solar. and they still enjoy nearly all of the modern conveniences we do. hardly are they just scraping by in some primitive hut. and they are using old wind and solar technology, not the much better, more efficient and cheaper new stuff they are putting out these days. all they would have to supplement is their cars in an energy sustainable future.

are we really so uncreative that the best our energy experts, economists and scientists can come up with is nuclear for a long term solution? sounds like corporate hogwash to me. talk about taking a lot of power and putting it in the hands of a few. f8ck that.

also sounds like we wont really decrease our energy use much. why should we if we can just build more clean, sustainable nuclear power plants. and why wouldnt people in undeveloped countries want them spotted all over the place so they can enjoy them too?

although now that chernobyl is uninhabitable it is an ecological preserve.

i always liked that nuke plant owner on the simpsons anyway i guess.