Jangseong-gun Local Food Direct Store's Outstanding Achievement 'Attention'

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Jo Hangyu] Despite the frozen local economic conditions due to COVID-19, the local food direct store in Jangseong-gun, Jeollanam-do, has attracted attention by achieving outstanding results.

According to the operation performance of the local food direct store in the first half of this year announced by Jangseong-gun on the 24th, the number of consumers visiting the direct store remained steady at over 1,000 people per day on average during the first half of the year.

This translated into sales performance, with the sales volume of agricultural and livestock products increasing by more than 68% compared to the previous year.

The ‘Nonghyup Jangseong-gun Local Food Direct Store,’ operated by Nam-myeon Nonghyup in Jangseong-gun, is the first specialized direct transaction store for local agricultural products in the Jangseong area.

Since its temporary opening in August 2017, its annual sales have been ‘soaring.’ Starting with 1 billion KRW in the first year, it recorded 3.5 billion KRW in 2018 and 4.4 billion KRW last year.

This year, it has already recorded sales of 3.7 billion KRW in the first half alone, demonstrating the popularity of Jangseong-gun’s local agricultural products.

In particular, this achievement draws more attention as it was accomplished during a period when consumer sentiment was extremely depressed due to the impact of COVID-19.

The recent consumer trend favoring home-cooked meals using safe ingredients rather than dining out, along with Jangseong’s location as a clean area adjacent to Gwangju Metropolitan City, has been identified as a factor attracting consumers.

In line with the growth of the local food direct store, Jangseong-gun secured a budget of 600 million KRW this year and decided to support the expansion and reconstruction of the local food direct store with a total project cost of 1.2 billion KRW.

Through this support project, the county plans to expand the existing agricultural product display area by more than 60%, build new storage and workspaces on adjacent plots to improve operational efficiency, and newly construct a farm restaurant to utilize it as a complex cultural space.

Yoo Doo-seok, the mayor of Jangseong-gun, said, “The current popularity of Jangseong local food is the result of the ‘Jangseong Food Plan,’ which our county and local Nonghyup have long collaborated on to establish a local food system.” He added, “We will build governance involving not only local Nonghyup but also Sangmu Military Base, the Office of Education, private companies, and local residents to steadily promote the core projects of the Food Plan.”

The ‘Food Plan’ is a comprehensive strategy that plans the entire process of production, distribution, and consumption related to food.

Its goal is to provide safe and healthy food to consumers’ tables and guarantee stable income for farmers.

Earlier in May, Jangseong-gun was the only region in Jeollanam-do selected for the ‘2020 Food Plan Package Support Contest’ hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. It confirmed the promotion of 11 Food Plan-related projects including ▲construction of a public meal service center ▲construction of a direct store in a metropolitan area ▲construction of an agricultural product processing center, and started the project aiming to establish a regional Food Plan over five years until 2024.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.