| Study on the Introduction of Agricultural Environment Conservation Programs | |||
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| Author | Lim, Youngah | ||
| Views | 59775 | Publication Date | 2017.12.30 |
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○ This study aims to introduce the contents of the 'Agricultural Environment Conservation Programs' (draft, AECP) derived from the task force of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) in 2017. This study also summarizes the future policy tasks in order to successfully adopt the AECP by analyzing the farms' awareness and acceptance about the programs. ○ Despite various efforts to improve the domestic agricultural environment, there are policy limitations and need for further improvement. In addition, the paradigm of agricultural policy has changed from production increase and competitiveness to an increase in the public function of agriculture including conserving the agricultural environment. - Examples are the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) in the USA, the Countryside Stewardship (CS) program in the UK, and the Japanese style grant for direct payments that were introduced as the agricultural environment policies. ○ MAFRA has operated the task force for the preparation of agricultural environment conservation programs (AECP), and the task force established the draft of the programs with the specific activity list. - Program activities are categorized into the areas of soil, water, atmosphere, landscape and rural living, and agricultural heritage and ecological conservation. Also, the activities are divided into optional, mandatory, or designated activities as well as individual or joint activities of the community. - For the actual introduction of the programs, there are the following policy tasks: setting the scope of the candidate area, eligibility of participants, relevant activities and incentives according to the type and difficulty of the activity, adding more evidence of the environmental impact of the activities, establishing each agent's role in planning, implementing, and evaluating the programs, analyzing cost-effectiveness of the implementation evaluation tools, developing the agricultural environment indicators and related database, disincentives to nonfulfillment, and clarifying the relationship with the existing policy projects. ○ As a result of farmers' survey, most of them are not well aware of 'cross-compliance.' The acceptability of the group of activities which is related to soil, water, and atmosphere conservation is relatively low while that of the activities related to 'landscape and rural living' and 'agricultural heritage and ecological conservation' is high. This result implies the direction of the step-wise introduction of the programs. ○ The result also confirms the importance of designing flexible programs to reflect the characteristics of regions and farmer types because different farmers in different regions have various levels of awareness and acceptability. ○ However, it is needed to discuss the introduction of the AECP under the national agricultural environmental policy and sustainable society framework. - The public consensus on the legitimacy of introducing the AECP, one of the incentive (subsidy) measures, is significant. - As a start point for establishing a mid or long-term agriculture environment policy road map or at least direction of the policy framework, AECP introduction is necessary for establishing the sustainable agricultural system. Researchers: Lim Youngah, Cho Wonju Research period: 2017. 8. ∼ 2017. 12. E-mail address: limy@krei.re.kr |
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