Because of global climate change, the Korean peninsular has undergone changes toward subtropical climate. According to the Rural Development Administration(RDA), 17% of the total cultivation acreage in Korea is forecasted to belong to subtropical climate zone. In response to these climate changes, the RDA has adapted 14 subtropical vegetables as economically attractive alternatives.
In addition to climate changes, the changing demographics provide economic opportunities for these subtropical vegetables in Korea. The numbers of foreigners in Korea who are potential consumers of these subtropical vegetables are forecasted to take 5% of the total population in 2020. Thus, projections of the cultivated acreage and the consumption for subtropical vegetables may be necessary to both vegetables producers and policy-dscision makers.
In this paper, I conducted the mid-term projection for the cultivated acreage and the consumption of subtropical vegetables, from 2010 to 2020. For the analysis, I chose six crops, water-convolvulus, bitter gourd, indian spinach, asparagus, moroheyia and okra. The projection is conducted by Equilibrium Displacement Model(EDM). Many parameters and elasticities employed to operate EDM were collected by many sources including producers and consumers survey, consulation, and various statistical data. I project the acreage and the amounts based on two scenarios on consumers: the first scenario includes only foreign residents, while the second one includes both foreign residents and main stream Korean consumers.
The projection results showed that the aconsumption of six subtropical vegetables increases by 19,222∼37,879 ton in 2020, while the cultivated acreage increase by 581∼1,065 ha. The projected acreage is found to amount to the local acreage of non-paddy areas of a county. The results of this paper are useful to establish future policy options for subtropical vegetables. Recently, local governments are competitively promoting to introduce subtropical vegetables as alternative crops to local farmers. However, based on the projection results, these competitive introduction of subtropical vegetables, not taking a consideration into their mid-term projections, maybe result in oversupply, thus decreasing farm incomes.