농산물 시장개방의 환경영향과 정책제언

Abstract

Agricultural Market Liberalization, its Environmental Impact and Policy Implications Objectives of this research are to analyze an environmental impact of agricultural market liberalization and to find environmental policy implications. Agricultural market liberalization has been widely known since UR and WTO and it has negative impact on our agricultural market which has low international competitiveness power. Especially, rice product among other agricultural products are negatively affected after liberalization. The reduction of rice production will cause decrease of rice paddy field area. Impact of reduction of agricultural production on environment is two-fold; positive effect is decrease of pollutants and negative impact is reduction of green fields and loss of natural environment due to change of farm land utilization structure through rice paddy field reduction. After the discussion of agricultural market liberalization was started, rice paddy field area decreased 12.3% during past 10 years and that of Seoul, Daejeon, Gyeonggi, Gyeongnam province had decreased 26~35% representing the most decrease in rice paddy field area. Thus the impact of agricultural trade liberalization on fertilizer consumption, generation of livestock wastewater, and waste generation and urbanization trend are analyzed. 1) Fertilizer Consumption The analysis on the relationship between fertilizer consumption and liberalization, rice paddy field area, dry field area shows that; Variables of rice paddy field area, dry field area and liberalization dummy does not have a significant and negative impact on decrease of fertilizer consumption. This implies that fertilizer consumption does not decrease directly after agricultural trade liberalization and it can't be concluded that water pollution due to farming declines, even though agricultural production decreases. 2) Waste Generation Interrelationship between rice paddy field area or dry field area and waste generation is analyzed in order to see the impact of agricultural production reduction on waste reduction. The dry field area has positive(+) impact on waste generation and the variable is significant according to t-statistics of the variable. Dry field area, especially, has larger impact that rice field area variable which implies waste generation in farm area is affected by dry field farming rather than rice farming. 3) Urbanization According to the analysis of the relationship between urbanization rate and agricultural area, pollution in farm land is being transferred to urban type pollution. 4) Farming Land Agricultural trade liberalization has a direct and negative(-) impact on the reduction of rice farming land area at 10% significance level. However, dry farming area is not affected as same as rice field area is. Environmental policy recommendations based on the results are suggested as follows. 1) Environmental Policy for Pollution Management Firstly, the prospect of agricultural development and its environmental impacts need to be reflected into the agricultural non-point source pollution management plan. As rice farming declines, dry field farming becomes more intensive and tends to use more fertilizer, which aggravate water pollution. Secondly, demand for livestock wastewater treatment infrastructure needs to be re-estimated and rearranged according to regional situation changes. Many livestock areas are on the reduction in the neighborhood of cities. 2) Environmental Policy for Resources Pollution Firstly, the demand for agricultural water needs to be reestimated due to the large reduction of rice farming. Secondly, a cpmprehensive plan of environment-friendly farm land use should be prepared beforehand. Demand for farmland development will be irresistibly increased and rapid conversion of farming land to city land will cause erosion of green area, loss of natural environment and species. 3) Link between Environmental policy and Environment-Friendly Farming Firstly, the way of agriculture production decision based on economic profitability should be changed to include environmental profitability. Secondly, concepts and range of environment-friendly farming or sustainable agriculture need to be expanded to include ecosystem-conservation, nature-conservation concept.