韓国

The gap between shipping condition and market needs in city, on marketing of fruits and vegetables in Korea, have been larger and larger with the growth of economy. Therefore, the existences of field collector, who have functions to collect fruits and vegetables and carry them out to the city, are inevitable. The field collector has taken these functions for such a long time. The 1996 statistical data show that farmers sell 38% of their products to field collector. Especially, of all vegetables, 50.6% of green vegetables and root crops, take the highest level, then followed by flavoring vegetables at 41.8%. The main reasons that farmers consign their products the field collector arc as follows; ①The characteristics of products that are lack of standardization, ②The shrinkage of farming units, ③The labor conditions in the rural area, ④The lack of functions and facilities of marketing organization. Under those circumstances, field collector get margin by collecting products directly from farm and sell them at wholesale market. However, in most case, field collector buys under-harvested crops speculatively and selfishly. Consequently, those marketing activity of field collector hampers the development of marketing system in Korea. In order to cope with those situation, agricultural cooperatives have been carried on the business of marketing price stable, and the registration system for wholesale markets is established to control the field collector's activities by the law, called 'The Law on Agricultural Marketing and Price Stabilization'. But those counter-measures are temporal interaction. Therefore, the construction of producer organizations for cooperative selling is most earnestly needed.