Korea DPR faces grim food outlook for 1998, works with
FAO to launch agricultural recovery
"The future for food supply in Korea DPR appears grim
- with or without emergencies", unless much needed
investment and industrial development arrives quickly,
according to a UN mission just back from visiting main
agricultural areas in the country to assess short and longer
term food supply prospects. A second mission has proposed a
number of projects to spur food production and rural
development as part of FAO's
Special
Programme for Food Security.
 The worst
drought in decades - rainfall in the summer months was less
than one-third of the long-term average - has reduced
forecast 1997 maize output to 1.14 million tonnes, the
lowest on record. Rice yields were less affected as the crop
is largely irrigated. Typhoons and tidal waves also wreaked
havoc in agricultural areas. This is the third year in a row
in which food production has fallen. In both 1995 and 1996
key agricultural zones in the south were hit by devastating
floods.
"Food production will only cover minimum needs for seven
months", according to the
Special
Report based on the findings of an FAO/World Food
Programme mission to the country in October/November 1997.
Substantial cereal imports, including food aid, will again
be needed in 1997/98 to meet minimum nutritional needs of
the population of just over 23 million. The report puts the
required figure at 1.95 million tonnes.
The report emphasizes that recent natural emergencies
have only hastened an already accelerated economic decline,
particularly after the collapse of preferential trading and
economic ties with the former Soviet Union. Economic
difficulties in the 1990s have eroded the country's ability
to buy food or raw materials, such as fuel and fertilizers,
that are essential to maintaining agricultural production
and distribution. Transportation within the country has
ground to almost a complete halt because of the lack of
fuel.
In the short term, food assistance to vulnerable groups
is essential, says the report, but "it is vital that the
government address the major issue of how the industrial
sector is to be revamped to generate much needed foreign
exchange and support domestic food production."
With a view to the longer term, FAO's
Investment
Centre, which assists developing countries by mobilizing
extra resources for agricultural and rural development, also
fielded a mission to Korea DPR to lay the groundwork for the
pilot phase of FAO's Special Food Programme for Food
Security. The programme is designed to improve national food
production and food security quickly in low-income
food-deficit countries through the use of new and improved
technologies.
The Investment Centre team, which included several
Chinese specialists, visited six cooperative farms in
high-potential areas of North and South Hwangae and South
Pyongan provinces, and a major hatchery for freshwater fish.
Projects proposed for these selected sites include support
to multiple cropping; integrated soil fertility management;
animal nutrition; water management; and aquaculture.
Under the South-South cooperation initiative of the
Special Programme, key Korea DPR officials and managers are
expected to travel to Sichuan Province in China to learn
from the experience of pilot areas in that country. They
would also visit selected agricultural areas and research
activities in Liaoning Province, which borders North Korea,
and an urban organic waste recycling factory in Beijing. The
study tour is scheduled for late February 1998.
10 December 1997
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