농업환경보전 프로그램 도입 방안 연구

Abstract

내년은 친환경농업 원년 선포 이후 20주년이 되는 중요한 해이다. 기존 국내 친환경농업 정책은 인증제도를 중심으로 설계되면서 친환경농업 확대에 대한 다양하고 체계적인 정책이 수립되는 바탕이 되었으나 국민들이 환경친화적 농업의 범위를 협소하게 인식하는 요인이 되기도 하였다.

이런 점에서 「제4차 친환경농업육성 5개년 계획」에서 ‘농업환경 강화’를 강조하면서 인증 이외의 정책을 추진하는 것은 매우 고무적인 일이다. 동 계획에 근거하여서 농림축산식품부에서는 다양한 분야의 전문가를 초빙하여 T/F를 구성하여서 높은 수준의 ‘농업환경보전 프로그램’ 활동안을 도출하였다. 이러한 프로그램 도입은 지속가능한 사회를 이룩하기 위한 한국형 농업환경 정책 수립에 대한 실질적인 농정 변화의 시작이 될 것으로 기대한다.

본 연구에서는 국내 농업환경 현황 및 해외사례, 농업환경보전 프로그램(안)과 농가 수용성을 함께 살펴보고 농업환경보전 프로그램 도입과 관련한 정책 과제에 대한 고민을 담고 있다. 농업환경보전 프로그램은 이제 시작 단계로 대상 지역 범위, 참여 대상, 인센티브 수준의 결정, 관련 농업환경 지표 및 데이터베이스 확보, 이행평가 방안, 의무‧선택 활동의 구분, 개별 농업인‧공동체 활동의 구분, 기존 농식품 사업과의 연계 방안 등 해결해야 하는 다양한 과제를 동반하고 있다.

○ This study aims to introduce the contents of the 'Agricultural Environment Conservation Programs' (draft, AECP) derived from the task force of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) in 2017. This study also summarizes the future policy tasks in order to successfully adopt the AECP by analyzing the farms' awareness and acceptance about the programs.

○ Despite various efforts to improve the domestic agricultural environment, there are policy limitations and need for further improvement. In addition, the paradigm of agricultural policy has changed from production increase and competitiveness to an increase in the public function of agriculture including conserving the agricultural environment. - Examples are the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) in the USA, the Countryside Stewardship (CS) program in the UK, and the Japanese style grant for direct payments that were introduced as the agricultural environment policies.

○ MAFRA has operated the task force for the preparation of agricultural environment conservation programs (AECP), and the task force established the draft of the programs with the specific activity list. - Program activities are categorized into the areas of soil, water, atmosphere, landscape and rural living, and agricultural heritage and ecological conservation. Also, the activities are divided into optional, mandatory, or designated activities as well as individual or joint activities of the community. - For the actual introduction of the programs, there are the following policy tasks: setting the scope of the candidate area, eligibility of participants, relevant activities and incentives according to the type and difficulty of the activity, adding more evidence of the environmental impact of the activities, establishing each agent's role in planning, implementing, and evaluating the programs, analyzing cost-effectiveness of the implementation evaluation tools, developing the agricultural environment indicators and related database, disincentives to nonfulfillment, and clarifying the relationship with the existing policy projects.

○ As a result of farmers' survey, most of them are not well aware of 'cross-compliance.' The acceptability of the group of activities which is related to soil, water, and atmosphere conservation is relatively low while that of the activities related to 'landscape and rural living' and 'agricultural heritage and ecological conservation' is high. This result implies the direction of the step-wise introduction of the programs.

○ The result also confirms the importance of designing flexible programs to reflect the characteristics of regions and farmer types because different farmers in different regions have various levels of awareness and acceptability.

○ However, it is needed to discuss the introduction of the AECP under the national agricultural environmental policy and sustainable society framework. - The public consensus on the legitimacy of introducing the AECP, one of the incentive (subsidy) measures, is significant. - As a start point for establishing a mid or long-term agriculture environment policy road map or at least direction of the policy framework, AECP introduction is necessary for establishing the sustainable agricultural system.

Researchers: Lim Youngah, Cho Wonju Research period: 2017. 8. ∼ 2017. 12. E-mail address: limy@krei.re.kr