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| ▲ President Han Gyeong-hee | ||
Farming is the very basic industry of human beings. No matter how variety the new industries come to flourish and disappear, farming, or agriculture if you like, has always been supplying us fresh food of all kinds which we cannot live without. Farmers, however, have weak point when it comes to marketing and selling although they have knowledge and knowhow in growing crops, vegetables, fruits and cattle. As saying goes that necessity is the mother of invention, the advent of cooperatives is just as natural.
Improvement of rice seed
Han Gyeong-hee, the President of Healthy Nation Cooperative, is a doctor of agriculture who has walked a single path in the field for the last 30 years. He is the one who first started ‘vegetables for salad’ business and made a great contribution to increasing income of farm houses. For the moment, he is not only into improvement of rice seed in Korea but also in South East Asia.
“The core business of Healthy Nation Cooperative is to improve rice seed in Vietnam and export it to the world. We’ve already finished a variety test and are receiving a flood of inquiry from local farmers. We must note that Vietnam is the second biggest rice exporter in the world and South Korea also can be a rice-lacked county in any time in the future” says Han.
KGIR (Korea Gold Seed In-Breed Rice)
Healthy Nation Cooperative seeded rice on a 30ha field in Vietnam and had the first harvest April this year. In order to increase productivity, Healthy Nation Cooperative used KGIR (Korea Gold Seed In-Breed Rice) on the field. The rice harvested from the field is bought by Healthy Nation Cooperative to export or sell to third countries. Taking the momentum, the president Han is working on securing a 300ha field within May this year with ambitious prospects of 5,000ha and even 10,000ha fields in the coming years.
The rice seed improved by Healthy Nation Cooperative is stronger against blight or harmful insects. As a result, it has brought a significant increase in productivity. In addition, the rice has better smell and gloss. All farming equipment and agricultural chemicals are directly delivered to Vietnam from South Korea to maximize its technical part.
Growing together
Healthy Nation Cooperative is providing its cutting edge agricultural solutions to local farmers in Vietnam covering from farming and management of cooperatives to production and distribution. When asked about the city dwellers’ fever of farming life in South Korea at the moment, Han gives a valuable advice that they need make note of the fact that age requires customized farming rather than the farming in broad terms. In other words, they need to do a little bit of research on the trend, profitable items and more importantly what they are good at. He added his advice to excellent agricultural scientists in Korea to turn their eyes to overseas farming land if they want to see further and wider of the industry at a global point of view.
신태섭 기자 tss79@naver.com
