Yangyang County Agricultural Products Processing Center Establishes Itself as a Hub for Local Farmers' Startups and Income Generation

Achieving First Overseas Export This Year Draws Attention
Boosting Agricultural Competitiveness and Driving Income Generation
New Processed Products Like Pear Chips and Potato Pancake Paste to Launch Soon

The Agricultural Products Comprehensive Processing Center in Yangyang County, Gangwon Province, has established itself as a hub for local farmers to launch processing businesses and generate income. This year, it has drawn attention by achieving its first overseas export results.

Agricultural Products Comprehensive Processing Center Cherry Jam. Provided by Yangyang County

The Yangyang County Agricultural Products Comprehensive Processing Center was completed in November 2019 and began full-scale operations in January 2020. After an expansion in 2023, the facility now covers a total area of 591.76 square meters. It is equipped with four processing rooms-dry, wet, side dish, and sterilization lines-as well as preprocessing rooms, packaging rooms, refrigerated rooms, and more than 70 types of processing equipment. Currently, the center produces 36 products across 16 categories.

In particular, in 2023, a budget of 2.1 billion KRW was invested to expand the building to two floors with a total area of 280 pyeong, and new processing equipment such as a sterilizer and a retort printer were introduced, allowing the center to expand from three to four processing lines.

The center supports farmers who do not have their own processing facilities by assisting with every stage from planning to production, design, and packaging. It also fully covers the costs of nutritional content and self-quality inspections, significantly reducing the burden on new startup farmers. In 2020, the center obtained HACCP certification for fruit and vegetable juice production, establishing a hygienic and safe manufacturing foundation.

Since 2019, the center has held a total of 10 processing education sessions for farmers, with over 300 graduates. These graduates have used the center to produce a variety of products, including pear chips, honey sticks, passion fruit syrup, aronia juice, blueberry jam, and shiitake pickles. To date, the center has generated a total of 25.8 tons in products and 526 million KRW in income.

The processed products are sold not only through online platforms such as Yangyang Mall and Gangwon Mall, but also at Nonghyup Hanaro Mart and the Yangyang local food market "Maeil Ahopsi." Notably, in January this year, the "Yangyang King Mushroom" farm exported 150 kilograms of shiitake mushroom powder to H Mart in the United States, marking the center's first overseas export achievement.

Additionally, the center has supported the startups of small-scale farms such as "Kim Yanghee Perilla Oil," "Haepung Chui," and "Gombatgil Farm," helping Yangyang grow into a leading hub for processed agricultural startups. Currently, products are being actively sold both online and offline.

In the first half of 2025, new products such as pear chips, Yangyang honey sticks, and potato pancake paste were launched. In the second half, the center is planning to release new products using a variety of local agricultural products, including basil pesto, traditional soybean paste, corn retort, shiitake patties, and passion fruit pear juice.

Hwang Byeonggil, Director of the Yangyang County Agricultural Technology Center, stated, "By expanding the local food business and establishing a virtuous cycle for the distribution of local agricultural products, we will provide farmers with opportunities to generate additional income and take the lead in strengthening the competitiveness of local produce. Starting with this year's first overseas export, we will do our best to ensure that processed agricultural products from Yangyang can enter overseas markets, riding the wave of the K-Food boom."

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