North Korean Kim demands more farmland to boost food production

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered infrastructure improvements and the expansion of farmland to increase food production, state media said on Thursday, amid warnings of an imminent food crisis.

Kim instructed to renovate irrigation systems, build modern agricultural machinery and create more arable land as the seventh enlarged meeting of the powerful Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party concluded on Wednesday.

The meeting began on Sunday to discuss the “urgent” task of improving the agricultural sector.

South Korea has warned of a worsening food crisis in the isolated north, including a recent rise in deaths from starvation in some areas, due in part to what it said was the failure of a new grain policy that limits private crop transactions.

North Korea’s economy has been hit hard by floods and typhoons, sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes, and a sharp decline in trade with China amid closed borders and the COVID-19 lockdown.

South Korea’s Rural Development Agency estimated that crop production in North Korea fell about 4% last year from a year earlier, citing heavy summer rains and other economic conditions.

The official Korean Central News Agency said Kim has laid out specific plans and tasks for building “rich, highly civilized socialist rural communities with advanced technology and modern civilization”.

He ordered the renovation of the irrigation system to counter climate change, the production of efficient agricultural machinery to modernize production, and the reclamation of tidal lands to expand farming areas, the agency said.

Experts say the lack of adequate agricultural infrastructure, machinery and supplies including fertilizer and fuel has made North Korea more vulnerable to natural disasters.

The mountainous country has also sought to expand arable land through tropical land reclamation along its western coast since the 1980s, but previous efforts have failed in part due to poor engineering and maintenance.

Under Kim, reclamation projects were relatively more successful, but with slow progress in converting the coastal mudflats into fertile farmland, they did little to alleviate food shortages, according to the US. 38 north He said the project is in late 2021.

“The state media report said that they set new goals and action plans, but I don’t see anything new because all the elements including irrigation and reclamation have already been raised before,” said Lim Yeol-chul, a professor of North Korean studies. at Kyungnam University in South Korea.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, noted that the report did not suggest new ideas or a potential change in grain policy that South Korea has blamed on food shortages.

The agency said that Kim stressed the need to tighten discipline in implementing the economic plan, warning against “practices to weaken the organizational and executive authority of the cabinet,” and ordered all party units to “check the efficiency of their work.”

The agency said the central committee also discussed ways to improve the country’s financial management, without elaborating.

Reporting from Hyonhee Shin. Editing by Stephen Coates and Lincoln Feast.

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