Sacheon-si Actively Promotes Measures to Address Rice Overproduction

Implementation of Four Projects Including the Strategic Crop Direct Payment System

Sacheon City in Gyeongnam Province is implementing four projects to support income preservation for farmers reducing rice cultivation: strategic crop direct payments, support for cultivating alternative crops in rice paddies, agreements to reduce rice cultivation area, and support for sorting costs in alternative crop complexes.

The strategic crop direct payment provides KRW 500,000 per hectare for cultivating food crops or forage crops in winter, KRW 1,000,000 for cultivating rice beans in summer, and KRW 4,300,000 for forage crops. Additionally, an extra KRW 1,000,000 is paid for double cropping (winter wheat or forage, summer rice beans).

Rice Optimal Production Banner.

The support for cultivating alternative crops in rice paddies offers KRW 1,000,000 per hectare for farmland that grew rice in 2022 but was newly converted to other crops (excluding forage) in 2023, as well as for farmland that was newly converted from rice to other crops in 2022 and continues to cultivate other crops in 2023.

The agreement to reduce rice cultivation area allocates 300 bags of public stock rice per hectare directly to farmers who cultivate other crops or leave their fields fallow in 2023 on paddies where rice was grown in 2022, or among those who received reduction agreement incentives in 2022 and cultivate other crops or leave fields fallow.

The support for sorting costs in alternative crop complexes provides partial sorting cost support per kilogram to management entities operating alternative crop complexes in rice paddies.

This is due to structural oversupply of rice caused by continuous decline in rice consumption amid changes in dietary habits such as increased meat consumption. Oversupply can lead to a drop in rice prices after harvest, making it important to stabilize rice supply and demand through adjusting rice cultivation area and appropriate production.

Jung Dae-woong, director of the Agricultural Technology Center, said, “Since rice prices at harvest are directly linked to farmers’ income, we urge farmers to take active interest and participate in cultivating alternative crops in rice paddies to stabilize rice prices.”

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