North Korea must increase agricultural production – Kim Jong-Un

Responding to reports of a worsening food shortage in his country, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said the country’s agricultural production must undergo a “fundamental transformation,” state media reported.

According to the official Korean Central News Agency, during a Feb. 27 meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, Kim expressed his government’s determination to “definitely achieve a revolutionary turnaround in agricultural production.”

The report did not describe any specific measures that North Korea would take to address the problem, but Kim said that change should occur “in the next few years.”

South Korea’s Unification Ministry said that the food situation in the neighboring country “seems to have worsened,” partly due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which reportedly led to reduced grain imports from China. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service estimates that North Korea imported only 50,000 tons of wheat in the 2021-22 marketing year, compared with 400,000 tons a year before the pandemic.

The South Korean government estimates that North Korea’s grain production in 2022 was 4.5 million tons, well below the 5.5 million tons of grain the country needs annually to feed 25 million people.

Most of North Korea’s agricultural production comes from collective farms.

Recall that from 1995 to 1999 there was a severe famine in North Korea, through ineffective policies of the authorities. Estimates of the number of deaths range from 220,000 to 3.5 million people.

Tags: North Korea, food security