A Study on Efficient Utilization of the Idle & Marginal Farm Land for Farm Household Income Increase - With Respect to Conservation of Farm Land and Sustainable Environment -

농가소득(農家所得) 증대(增大)를 위한 한계농지(限界農地)의 효율적(效率的) 이용방안(利用方案) - 농지(農地) 및 환경보존(環境保存)을 중심으로-

Korean economy has been developed successfully in the course of implementing the five year economic development plans since 1962. The gap of incomes and quality of life between rural and urban area has been widened and it made rural farm laborers drain to urban areas. Therefore the prevailing situation of labor shortage and wage hike in rural area has made farm management deteriorate in recent years. Under the internal and international unfavorable economic conditions, marginal farm land of 66.5 thousand ha has been idled as of end of 1993. The total area outside agricultural development zone with bad farming conditions including irrigation and drainage, and land consolidation for mechanization were estimated at 360.4thousand ha equivalent to 17.5% of the total farm land area in Korea. Considering the topographical conditions of marginal lands, the effective use of marginal lands should be studied from the view point of public interest rather than from the view point of individual economic conditions. Considering the present agricultural economic settings, such as price decrease, unfavourable benefits of farm products, labour shrotage, free trade of farm products and poor physical condition of marginal lands, the institutional and realistical measures for the effective utilization of idle and marginal land should be studied as soon as possible. Detail land use pattern should be surveyed in the areas outside agricultural development zone and have to be classified as orchard farms, grass land, fish culture farms, lawn and ornamental tree farm, sight seeing and leisure farms for urban peoples, special crops production farms and common farms to be developed for farm mechanization. According to the surveyed results, the expected utilization patterns of the idle and marginal lands could be considerd as village common use, farm land base development, leisure farm development, mutual complementary utilization between urban and rural areas, G't purchase and management, credit supply and new extension services, improvement of cropping patterns and sight seeing and leisure farm patterns. For the successful and reasonable management of the marginal lands, the actions such as institutional improvement, prohibition of idle marginal land, enforcement of activities of farm management committee members and land banking system of RDC including development and utilization systems should be included.