한국농업기술 이노베이션 : 성과와 전략

Abstract

현대 산업사회에서 기술은 경제성장의 원동력으로서 어떤 생산요소보다 중요하며 농업에서도 마찬가지이다. 2000년대 들어 농업성장이 눈에 띄게 정체되면서 기술의 중요성은 더욱 커지고 있으나 농업부문에 대한 국가 전체의 R&D투자는 크게 증가하지 않고 있다. 새롭고 혁신적인 농업기술이 절실히 요청되는 시점에서 매우 안타까운 현상이다. 농업발전과 기술과의 관계를 올바르게 인식하기 위해서는 기술이 농업성장에 얼마나 기여하였으며, 기술발전의 원천은 무엇인지 파악해야 하며 기술투자의 경제성 분석이 필요하다. 또한 우리의 농업기술 수준과 개발 잠재력에 대한 평가도 필요하다. 이 보고서는 이러한 문제들을 선행연구에 대한 비판적 검토와 실증적인 자료분석을 통하여 규명하고 아울러 미래의 기술발전과 바람직한 혁신체제에 대한 해답을 찾는데 도움을 줄 것이다.

As seem in many developed countries, technological innovation has contributed to more than 50% of Korean agricultural growth during the last 50 years. Development of high yield seed technology, replacement of animal power through farm mechanization, and year-round vegetable production system with use of poly-vinyl materials are typical examples of innovative agricultural technologies in Korea.

There has been several factors contributing to the rapid technological progress in Korean agriculture. Among them, there are three major sources to such a successful innovation in the Korean agricultural sector : Korean government has led agricultural technology innovation by strengthening the national agricultural research and extention system. It was a technology-push or technology supplier-oriented model instead of the technology demand-pull or technology used-oriented : such private sectors as agro-industry has contributed much to importing advanced foreign farm technology from developed countries. It includes modern farm inputs technology such as fertilizer, peaticides, nutritional feed and farm machinery : and finally the farmer's high prospensity to new technology have contributed to rapid diffusion of agricultural innovation at farm level.

Technological development in the agricultural sector contributed more to the consumers than producers in Korea. During the last 40 years, the real prices of rice, egg and green house vegetable have not been increased due to the improvement of agricultural technologies.

Economic efficiency of R&D investment measured by IRR in the agricultural sector has been reported by many agricultural economists in Korea. It ranges from 30% to 50% per year. Even though such high IRR ratios, there are always under-investment for agricultural R&D due to high economic externalities in the agricultural sector.

To prepare the technology-oriented Korean agriculture we have to challenge new areas of technology development path. Intellecutural property right in the areas of new seed varieties and material and BT and IT are already strengthening between countries. Technological gaps between Korea and advanced countries in the areas of bio-tech, food safety, environmental farming as well as bio-fuel technologies are exists.

Therefore, the national agricultural innovation system has to change. In order to forcus and catch up with the advanced agricultural technologies, private sector as well as local agricultural innovation system should be strengthened. For this, privatization of the nation agricultural R&D system should be positively considered for Korean agricultural technology development. Moreover, Korean government should allocate more R&D expenditure on the agricultural sector, because the private sector is not willing to invest R&D expenditure due to high risks under the agricultural trade liberalization situation.