(Photograph: Korean Peasants League) Farmers throwing unhulled rice over the street to appeal for the needs to stabilize rice prices (in Soul, South Korea)
[Jeonbuk, South Korea, by Jin Zhezhu, Maki Kondo, The Japan Agricultural News Reporters]
Rice prices in South Korea dipped to the level of 30 years ago, causing a furor among local farmers. A nationwide association of 3 million South Korean farmers, the Korean Peasants League (KPL), has issued a remonstrance on September 25 and the protests are spreading all over the country with local rice farmers plowing out their preharvest rice using their own trucks or gathering in Soul to attend massive street demonstrations. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan highly praises the rice farming of the neighboring country, saying that the cost of growing rice in South Korea is lower than that in Japan, but the farmers there are now in distress.
The price of brown rice was at around 8,300 yen per 60 kilograms as of September 15, down 15 percent from a year earlier, according to a local report.
The imbalance between demand and supply is responsible for the price fall. The government’s rice stock has reached 2 million tons as of the end of August, equivalent to half of the yearly domestic rice consumption. This year’s bumper harvest and rising import have put further restrain on the prices.
The farmers’ association said in the statement that they are opposed to the Park Geun Hye administration which is responsible for today’s price fall and that they will take actions to call for her resignation unless the government supports the prices.
On September 22, 6,000 members of the association met in Soul and took their tractors down the streets, waving signs to call for a ban on the import of rice for food and responsible actions of the president for the price fall. Some staged sit-in strikes or threw rice over the street in protest against the government.