稲作

A great progress has been made in Korea especially in rice farming during the period of the high economic growth since the 1960s. The yield of rice has increased so remarkably that the self-sufficiency of rice was attained in 1970s. In 1980s, the labor productivity of rice farming has greatly developed through the progress in farm mechanization. In connected to these developments, several studies have been made on the issues of scale of economy in the Korean rice farming. However, those studies do not seem to be enough analytical on the factors which caused to the differences in the productivity by size of farms. The present paper contains a critical reviews of previous studies on the scale economy and the results of the analysis of factors affected to the development of productivity of rice farming in Korea. The main conclusions are summarized as follows: (1) The shortcomings included in the previous studies as for scale economy were : ① The cost function analysis adopted, had included methodological problems in indicating the factors that caused to the differences in the productivity of rice farming, ② The revenue-expenditure analysis of rice farming were not included, and ③ The role and effects of the product-elements of rice farms had not been well analyzed on the differences of productivity by the farm-size. (2) The stable increase in the yield of and the labor efficiency in the production of rice in the first period (1966～1973) were attributable to an abundant use of chemical input and a diffusion of small-sized machinery such as power tillers, vertical pumps and power sprays (3) The yield of rice increased remarkably in the second period (1974～1982). It was due to the innovation of high-yield-variety of rice, the stable supplies of fertilizer and pesticides, the advances supported by the small-machinery, and land consolidation. Because of the high economic growth, a huge amount of labor force moved out from rural areas to the urban as well as industrial cities. Consequently, the lack of farm labor caused the limit of expansion of the size of individual farms because the transplanting and harvesting of rice had not been mechanized yet. (4) In the third period (1983～1991), the efficiency in the use of labor has been remarkably improved due to the introduction of medium-sized machinery, i.e. wheel tractors, transplanter and grain combine. As the profitability of rice farming has been kept in a relatively low price of farm input materials and low wage-rates for hired labor, the tendency toward the increase in number of large-sized rice farms with highly mechanized has become more obviously recognized phenomenon. (5) The aspects of the differences in the productivity and profitability of rice farming by size of farms in each period can be summed up in the following: First, in the first period, the differences were spread due to agricultural chemicals input and the diffusion of small machinery, but it was not still so large. In the second period, the differences had diminished owing to the introduction of HYV and the limited scale-economy of small machinery. In the third period, the scale economy has realized because of the introduction of medium-sized machinery to the large-sized farm. The differences by size of farms clearly observed.