시설원예농업의 생력화를 위한 기술개발 전략 = Strategies to Develop High Technology for Modernization of the Greenhouse Horticulture

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Recently agriculture in Korea faces very difficult situations domestically and internationally. Domestically, promoted movement of farmers from the rural areas to the urban areas caused by a weak agricultural production infrastructure, small management scales and a poor living environment in the rural areas. As a result farmer income and product competitiveness in the international markets are decreasing because of the farm labor shortage, higher labor cost, decreased farming land, and increased land price.
Korean agriculture has to overcome this difficult situation. Because Korea will not be able to survive or advance to a developed country in a true sense without recovering competitiveness of her agricultural products in the international markets. This has been evidently shown in the human history and is a most important part of the world trade order. In other word, we have to choose crop commodities which might have the most competitiveness and recover competitiveness by lowering the production costs of those items. At the same time we have to promote quality and productivity for the domestic markets as well as international markets.
Greenhouse horticulture is a capital-intensive agriculture which requires high technology. We realize that greenhouse horticulture has very high potential for expansion in the future for domestic markets as well as for export because of the highest added value of its products and of competitive edge it has now. However, there are many concerns and problems we have to solve to develop greenhouse horticulture as a capital- and technology-intensive agriculture as an area of high technology agriculture.
Firstly, greenhouse structures have to be standardized. Standardization of the greenhouse structures will facilitate material supply and lower construction cost. As a result, research, development and education for the crop management, and installation and management of the facility and machinery can be simplified using a systemized management of the environment and crops.
Secondly, hydroponic production systems such as nutrient solution culture and inert medium culture have to be introduced. And this is necessary especially for the automation for labor-saving and stable crop production. Development of adequate culture systems, research for the proper methods of crop management, and improvement of the marketing structure have to be considered together by the researchers, industry managers and horticultural producers.
Thirdly, plug seedling production systems have to be introduced for the ultra-modernization or familiarization of the greenhouse crop production facility. The plug production system is a high technology agriculture which can separate crop production from the seedling production, and will facilitate the marketing of quality seedlings regardless of the season and reduce seedling production cost considerably.
The standardization of the greenhouse structure, and introduction of hydroponic production systems and plug production systems mentioned above will actively and certainly facilitate the greenhouse horticulture as a ultramodern technology-intensive agricultural industry. It can not be overemphasized that the farmers have to adopt this technology developed by the domestic people who know the domestic situation better than anyone else.