韓國 農業의 土地資本스톡 推計와 그 分析

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to estimate the results on how the land capital stock of land improvement projects has been formed in Korean agriculture and examine the role of the estimated land capital stock in the change of the production technology related to the growth of Korean agriculture. The reason why Korean agriculture could have kept growing even when the agricultural land and labor, which are fundamental production factors, were changing with a tendency to decrease since the 60's was because there has been a continuous increase in the land productivity and the labor productivity. This could be the results of positive factor substitution and efforts to distribute technologies as a response to the technical changes of production such as improvement in plant breeding and fertilization, etc. and to changes in inducing factor substitution like the introduction of farming machines to substitute labor. This is because there has continuously been an enormous investment of land improvement capital in order to realize technical progress and increase of productivity.

However, many researchers in the past have not taken into consideration the land improvement capital which exhibits such effects in the process of analyzing the growth factor of Korean agriculture. As a result of that, it could be said, the level of contribution on each factor against to the agricultural growth has been overestimated or underestimated. The biggest reason why there has not been a study that takes this into consideration even with such problems is because researches on the method of estimation to reflect the land improvement capital on analyses have not yet been done systematically. Therefore, based on the data of 『Year Book of Agricultural Land and Water Development Statistics』, which has been demonstrated most useful in understanding the types of land improvement and the track records at this point, this study has set up an original method and attempted to estimate the land capital stock.

By totalling and analyzing the performance record of project cost for each project for agricultural land and water development from the statistical record after 1967, we found a huge change in the annual average amount invested from 172.7 billion KRW in 1967/69 to more than 16 times much in 1997/99. However, as the scale of investment to agricultural and forestry industries declined after the Korean financial crisis in 1997, the investment on the agricultural land and water development also showed a high rate of reduction. In terms of the amount invested per project, the weight of importance shifted from irrigation water development in the 60's to large-scale area development project toward the end of the 70's and to farmland improvement and expansion project after the end of the 80's. And, it was confirmed that there had been more investments made on the areas centering the rice fields. After estimating the land capital stock by an original method which is based on the investment result of each agricultural land and water development projects and takes into consideration the loss of agricultural land where there is an accumulation of depreciation and capital, the land capital stock related to agricultural production in Korea was estimated 37 trillion 632.5 billion KRW in 2002/04 and found to have increased 15.5% annually after 1967/69. Starting from 1992/94, in terms of the relative importance of land capital stock per project corresponding to time, while the importance of land capital stock by the irrigation water development, which had a high weight of importance in the past, decreased, the importance by farmland improvement and expansion was greatly increased.

After examining the role of land capital stock estimated in relation to the growth of Korean agriculture from the tendency of partial factor productivity and factor ratio, it was found that the land capital stock, formed with high importance on the irrigation water development along with the introduction of the "Tong-Il Rice" as a high yield, high response to fertilizer variety at the end of the 70's has greatly contributed toward the increase(BC Technology) of land productivity by raising the effect of increased fertilization through improvement of irrigation and drainage. Also, it was found that the expansion of investment on farmland improvement and expansion projects and the increase of weight of importance of land capital stock caused by the projects while the reduction of agricultural labor continued after the 80's have contributed toward the expansion(M Technology) of labor productivity by promoting the interchange of labor and machine.

After verifying the factor productivity function by estimation to see what influences the land capital stock had on the change of agricultural productivity, it was found that the change of land capital stock per unit area has contributed continuously on the increase of land productivity after 1967 in combination with the input of fertilizer. In terms of the labor productivity, while the interchange between the labor and the machine had an influence on the change of labor productivity before 1993, it was verified that the expansion in the land area and changes in land capital stock contributed on the improvement of labor productivity after 1993. Also after inspecting the differences on the agricultural productivity and the technology between the lands, it was found that the difference of labor capital stock and the input amount of fertilizer in the paddy fields and the uplands had led to the gap of land productivity before 1993. However, it was confirmed that the gap has been decreasing since after 1993. In terms of the labor productivity, it was verified that the uplands have been lower than the paddy fields to some extent both before and after 1993.

This paper has examined the role of land capital stock in the change process of production technologies related to the growth of Korean agriculture. Thus, it appears the validity of the results would change depending on the accuracy of the estimated results of the land capital stock. There is a possibility that the magnitude of the estimated land capital is over- or underestimated due to limitation of the statistical data in the process of estimation. It appears that there is a room for improvement for such problems once more elaborate statistical data is found and methods of analysis are developed from now on.

Despite these problems, it could be said that this paper is significant because it deduced important results that are critical to clarify the analysis on agricultural production structure and the characteristics of the technological changes in Korean agriculture by estimating the land capital stock in the field of agriculture for the first time in Korea.