THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PLOT GEOMETRY AND INPUTS REQUIRED FOR FARM MACHINE OPERATION IN KOREA

The rapid industrial growth, the consequent shortage of farm labour and increase in their wage level have facilitated more capitalized agricultural mechanization pattern in Korea. The efficiency of capital intensive machine is highly dependent on farm land structure. This paper describes a model explaining the relationship between farmland structure and required inputs for machine operation and to estimate required inputs for machine operation on the national basis for Korea for its paddy production system. The machine cost is closely related to operation area, but the required labour-hours are more related to machine type adopted . From the technology introduction point of view, if capital intensive machine is introduced, less labour-hours are required but machine kW-hours increase rapidly. From the plot geometry point of view, on good geometry plots, machine kW-hour and labour-hour required are less than that on the poor geometry plots. The kW-jhour per hectare of mechani al energy input id better indicator of mechanization level than kW per hectare or number of machine. If the adopted technology is more capital intensive and plot geometry is good, the cost reduction effect is highly significant.